please stop falling for facebook scams.

(originally published on 8/14/15)

It seems Facebook has once again been inundated by contests and promotions encouraging otherwise intelligent people to share posts and tag friends, all in the name of winning a dream vacation (or car, or boat, or gift card, or box of kittens, etc).

Maybe it’s because I’m a skeptic at heart, but I’ve never fallen for one of these. They’re just so obviously scams. Why is it that people that I thought had common sense continually fall for them?

Let’s make a few things clear. Walt-Disney.World is not a legitimate page. Neither is Disney-Cruise-Line or any other page with misspellings or incorrect usage of punctuation in the title. Shocking, right? If the contest or giveaway seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Here’s another easy way to spot a fake. If the post has numerous grammatical errors and misspelled words, it’s a fake. Believe it or not, but legitimate companies hire people to post on social media. It is their job to post on Facebook.

Somehow I don’t think the Walt Disney Company (or Land Rover, or Six Flags, or Target, etc) would pay someone to represent the company on social media who doesn’t have at least a basic grasp of English composition. Do you?

So, how do you know if a page is legitimate or not? Facebook actually makes it very easy because Facebook verifies pages for us! Crazy, right? If Facebook has verified a page, there will be a blue check mark next to the page title. Here is an example of a Facebook search for Disney Cruise:

It really is quite simple to spot a fake. I could go into all of the reasons why “liking” and “sharing” fake pages is a bad idea, but I won’t. There are plenty of other blogs and news stories dedicated to that.

If I have prevented at least one friend from embarrassing herself by sharing a fake page on Facebook, then my time spent writing this post has been worth it.