The New South Wales Police Force has weighed in on the latest Facebook scam to hit Qantas, warning travellers to steer clear of what appears to be a “like farming” scheme on the social network.
The airline has also told its customers to avoid Facebook pages that attempt to lure Qantas customers into liking and sharing posts in exchange for the chance to win airfares and cash.
The scam originated from a Facebook page called “Qantas Air”, which said in a now-deleted post the airline was celebrating its 94th birthday by giving away 975 business class tickets to anywhere in the world, as well as $5000 in spending money, according to news.com.au.
To win the “prize”, Facebook users were asked to like the “Qantas Air” Facebook page and share the post.
NSW Police issued a warning about the “like farming” scam on Wednesday via its Facebook page, telling followers the genuine Qantas Facebook page can be identified by a blue ‘verified’ icon.
WARNING! Fake Qantas ‘like farming’ scam which offers people the chance to win first class flights has reportedly been…
Posted by NSW Police Force on Tuesday, March 1, 2016
“Scammers set up these fake pages to accumulate as many likes as possible in the shortest possible time,” NSW Police said.
“Facebook Pages with large numbers of likes can later be used to launch survey scams and other types of shady activity.”
“We work with Facebook to ensure these pages and content are removed as quickly as possible,” Qantas said.
NSW Police said in its post Facebook users should report scams via the federal government’s ScamWatch service.
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Eloise is an experienced business journalist and editor, who has held senior editorial roles at SmartCompany since 2014. Prior to joining SmartCompany, Eloise was news editor at Books+Publishing, the trade press for the Australian book industry. Eloise has degrees in media and communications, marketing and business management, and political science. You can follow her on LinkedIn, and Twitter at @ellykeating.
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