{"id":2733,"date":"2019-04-06T19:34:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T19:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.syyhoaxanalyzer.com\/?p=2733"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T17:00:00","slug":"Powerball-2016-Like-Farming-Scam-Facebook-Page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.syyhoaxanalyzer.com\/?p=2733","title":{"rendered":"Powerball 2016 Like-Farming Scam Facebook Page"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Scam<\/a><\/p>\n

According to a Facebook Page that calls itself \u00a0‘Powerball 2016’ you can get a share in recent Powerball wins just by liking and sharing posts, liking the Page, and commenting ‘Done’ when you are finished. Posts on the page claim that John and Lisa Robinson, \u00a0Randy Barnum, and several other \u00a0winners of major Powerball jackpots are all giving away thousands \u00a0of dollars to Facebook users who like and share as instructed. The posts feature photographs of these winners.<\/p>\n

But, of course, the Page is a scam. It has no \u00a0association whatsoever with Powerball and the lottery winners featured on the Page are certainly not giving their \u00a0money to strangers in exchange for liking and sharing. The photographs of winners published on the Page are stolen from various news reports about the wins.<\/p>\n

As with other like-farming scams<\/a>, the fraudulent Page is designed simply to accumulate large numbers of Page likes as quickly as possible. And, by tricking people into sharing and commenting on their bogus posts, the scammers ensure that their material is seem by an ever increasing number of users.<\/p>\n

Once a Facebook Page has accumulated a large number of likes, it can then be used to launch further fraud campaigns such as survey scams<\/a> or advance fee lottery scams<\/a>. \u00a0Alternatively, the Page can be sold on the black market to other scammers who will repurpose it to fit their own nefarious goals.<\/p>\n

Despite the seemingly obvious absurdity of the claims on \u00a0the fake Page, many people are apparently \u00a0taken in. \u00a0The bogus posts on the \u00a0page \u00a0have been shared and liked many thousands of times along with countless \u00a0‘done’ comments posted by ever hopeful users. Sadly, a great many users participate in such schemes in the \u00a0vain hope that \u00a0they may be true. ‘Just in case’<\/a>, is often their rather lame justification. But, by participating, they help to clutter our social media feeds with ever more useless garbage. \u00a0And, often, by participating they can also compromise their privacy and security by divulging their personal information.<\/p>\n

Some quick rules of thumb:<\/p>\n

1: Any claim that a lottery winner is randomly giving away large \u00a0portions of their \u00a0winnings to total strangers via the Internet or email should be treated with \u00a0immediate suspicion. While many lottery winners may indeed give money to charities or the less fortunate, \u00a0it is very unlikely that they will simply distribute cash randomly to people they do not even know.<\/p>\n

2: Any Facebook Page or post that claims that you can win large \u00a0sums of cash or valuable prizes just by liking, and sharing or by participating in online surveys is quite likely to be fraudulent.<\/p>\n