This is a scam, right?

[Re 4/4]

Variations on this seem to keep popping up in my social media feeds:



Image description: a facebook ad from "Discount for railway transport" promising an e gift card for UK residents for a year's free travel with GWR for only £1.69. The picture itself is of a GWR train at a station and someone's hand holding a red credit-card sized card looking like a mix of a GWR smartcard and a traditional ticket (orange stripes at top and bottom).

It sounds way too good to be true, and there's no mention of it on the GWR website that I can find. Is this the latest way to gather our details for propaganda ahead of the next election or something?

 

[Merseysider]

something nefarious for sure.

no way they'd throw away their £5k+ season ticket revenue for £1.69.

and the emoji they've used there is especially cringey

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Variations on this seem to keep popping up in my social media feeds:

View attachment 145288

It sounds way too good to be true, and there's no mention of it on the GWR website that I can find. Is this the latest way to gather our details for propaganda ahead of the next election or something?

A quick reverse image search finds this response from GWR from August

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=677125267785352&set=a.641770567987489&type=3&locale=en_GB

You may have seen this on your Facebook timelines. Please be aware that this is NOT a genuine offer and nothing to do with GWR.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

According to this site, it's NOT a genuine GWR offer...

Great Western Railway is not giving away a free year of travel for £1.69 - Full Fact

Hundreds of people have shared a Facebook post advertising the implausibly good deal.

fullfact.org

Extract...

The rail company has confirmed publicly that this is not true, and has warned people to take care when interacting with Facebook pages offering such deals.

Which? magazine have previously commented on similar fake "offers"...

Watch out for dodgy Facebook ads offering free train travel for a year - Which? News

Scam ads claim Network Rail is giving away 150 free travel cards

www.which.co.uk

Extract...

Fraudsters are trying to lure victims with the promise of free train travel for a year.

These dodgy Facebook ads claim Network Rail is giving away 150 travel cards, and all you need to do to get one is complete a survey and pay a small delivery fee.

Basically seems to be a scam to harvest name and address and card payment details.

 

[TheSmiths82]

Why is this still appearing? I reported this to Facebook ages ago. It is about the the law caught up with social media firms who seem to think advertising laws don't apply to them.

I haven't seen it for a while though so I had assumed they did put a stop to it. I must live about 150 miles to the nearest GWR stop yet I used to see this advert a lot. I have however used GWR quite a lot.

 

[D1537]

Why is this still appearing? I reported this to Facebook ages ago. It is about the the law caught up with social media firms who seem to think advertising laws don't apply to them.

I haven't seen it for a while though so I had assumed they did put a stop to it. I must live about 150 miles to the nearest GWR stop yet I used to see this advert a lot. I have however used GWR quite a lot.

There's very little social media firms can do about repeated spam/scam posts like this except remove them when they're reported. They'll just come back from a different account with slightly different wording, though.

I'm an admin for a FB group and I've been removing similar ones to these for probably the last two years. You can catch a lot of them with wording filters, but you'll never get them all.

 

[Railsigns]

I've seen this a few times on Facebook and I've reported it each time.

A big giveaway is the comments from various "satisfied customers" showing off the free tickets they supposedly obtained using this GWR promotion, for travel on routes not served by GWR. Some even specified that they were only valid on a particular operator's services (not GWR).

 

[skyhigh]

Why is this still appearing? I reported this to Facebook ages ago.

It's partly whack-a-mole as there are hundreds of different accounts posting these spam ads with slightly different wording making it hard for automated processes to detect them. I guess AI may help with that issue going forward though.

 

[LUYMun]

I've seen scam GWR adverts like that on Facebook before. In fact, there would be comments made by fake accounts praising for the free tickets, with pictures attached. Poorly Photoshopped images of £0.00 tickets displaying non-GWR destinations, that is.

 

[TheSmiths82]

These are not spam posts though, they are adverts in which people are paying Facebook to display. That is very different from spammers posting this sort of thing in groups which I know also happens.

 

[thelongestroad]

There's very little social media firms can do about repeated spam/scam posts like this except remove them when they're reported. They'll just come back from a different account with slightly different wording, though.

I'm an admin for a FB group and I've been removing similar ones to these for probably the last two years. You can catch a lot of them with wording filters, but you'll never get them all.

It's partly whack-a-mole as there are hundreds of different accounts posting these spam ads with slightly different wording making it hard for automated processes to detect them. I guess AI may help with that issue going forward though.

Well that page has been left "up" by Facebook for months. The post with the link (albeit now timing out) to phish for personal details has been left up too.

I'm pretty sure I reported it to FB months ago and the response was it broke no rules.

 

[sor]

the GWR logo on the card is quite obviously wrong too. They do say that scammers deliberately include obvious mistakes to weed out those with a bit of savvy.

 

[Oxfordblues]

Fortunately I'm the lucky possessor of a Western Region Status Pass; otherwise I might very well have fallen for this convincing-looking scam.

 

[Kite159]

100% it's a scam. Similar to those adverts featuring various famous people (Martin Lewis) saying "invest in BobCoin and earn thousands overnight".

Just hit report & block

 

[JohnMcL7]

Well that page has been left "up" by Facebook for months. The post with the link (albeit now timing out) to phish for personal details has been left up too.

I'm pretty sure I reported it to FB months ago and the response was it broke no rules.

I've reported a number of scams on Facebook and each time they replied they had found no problems instead offering me options to block the person.

Recently I received a promoted post from Facebook with a drone worth over £3,500 being sold for £99. I reported it and FB found nothing wrong, I requested a review of it and they replied again there was definitely nothing wrong. Just after they promoted the same scammer again this time with a camera worth £5,500 being sold for £39. I

 

[Gloster]

It is listed on .fullfact.org

The heading was ‘Great Western Railway is not giving away a year of free travel for £1.69’ and dated 25 August 2023.

WHAT WAS CLAIMED​

Great Western Railway is running a promotion offering all UK residents a gift card for a year’s free travel for £1.69.

OUR VERDICT​

The rail company has confirmed publicly that this is not true, and has warned people to take care when interacting with Facebook pages offering such deals.
Hundreds of people have shared a fake offer on Facebook, claiming that UK residents can get a year’s free travel through Great Western Railway (GWR) for just £1.69.
The post says: “Great Western Railway is running a promotion offering all UK residents a gift card for a year's free travel for just £1.69.
“Simply click on the button below and answer a few questions to receive your card. The number of cards available is limited!”
The post also has a button you can click, which takes you through to a webpage designed to look like a GWR page but has an unrelated URL.
The page asks the viewer to answer three basic questions, and then play a short scratchcard-style game. Another page then loads, where viewers are invited to enter their details to “win” before being asked for payment details.
These pages also have GWR branding, but most of the buttons do not work and again the URL is unrelated to the company.
GWR has confirmed on its own Facebook page that the offer is not real.
The post says: “You may have seen this on your Facebook timelines. Please be aware that this is NOT a genuine offer and nothing to do with GWR.
“Please take extra care when interacting with pages who claim to be working with verified organisations.
“This page has been reported and hopefully Facebook will take swift action to remove it.”
One way to be sure an offer is genuine is by looking to see whether it has been shared by the company’s official page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on Facebook and a longer post history.
In this case, the Facebook page that shared the post has just 48 followers, was set up on 17 August, and has only one post publicly available.
Posts like these are extremely common on Facebook, often generating thousands of shares, and we have recently fact checked a number of them which have appeared in the form of coupons for businesses such as Alton Towers and Aldi.

From fullfact.org

 

[BlueLeanie]

Why is this still appearing? I reported this to Facebook ages ago. It is about the the law caught up with social media firms who seem to think advertising laws don't apply to them.

In the old days the Newspapers operated a scheme called the Mail Order Protection Scheme or "MOPS", it basically covered you if you posted off your cheque for a chest spring, daffodil bulbs or sofa covers and the firm didn't deliver.

Perhaps Facebook and Co should be legally required to offer the same guarantee for products advertised on their sites? I suspect they'd suddenly be keen to clear out sites that were offering £8000 season tickets for £1.69 if they were going to be forced to stump up for the tickets to purchasers.

 

[dk1]

If anything seems to good to be true & all that

 

[Master29]

I had this come up on my FB too. It was noticeable how many foreign names were creeping up with messages saying how good a deal it was. Not being xenophobic at all but it does rather give the game away geographically, amongst other things.

 

[miklcct]

A while a ago there was also a similar ad for London Underground Travelcard as well. I entered the information and reached the payment page, then an HTTPS error occurred, which meant it was a scam.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

There's very little social media firms can do about repeated spam/scam posts like this

There’s lots they could do, such as refusing to accept paid-for adverts containing the trademarked string “Great Western Railway” without manual verification. That they choose not to do this is entirely on them.

Let’s remind ourselves of the last time Facebook pleaded “there’s very little we can do”: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/n...st-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

 

[JB_B]

There’s lots they could do, such as refusing to accept paid-for adverts containing the trademarked string “Great Western Railway” without manual verification. That they choose not to do this is entirely on them.

Let’s remind ourselves of the last time Facebook pleaded “there’s very little we can do”: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/n...st-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

Yes. Immense power, almost zero accountability, lots of profit.

 

[TheSmiths82]

In the old days the Newspapers operated a scheme called the Mail Order Protection Scheme or "MOPS", it basically covered you if you posted off your cheque for a chest spring, daffodil bulbs or sofa covers and the firm didn't deliver.

Perhaps Facebook and Co should be legally required to offer the same guarantee for products advertised on their sites? I suspect they'd suddenly be keen to clear out sites that were offering £8000 season tickets for £1.69 if they were going to be forced to stump up for the tickets to purchasers.

This is what is needed, but I don't understand why this useless government have not acted. This sort of scam being advertised on Facebook is nothing new. As I said in earlier post many of these are paid for adverts and that to me changes things legally. It is same with Google as well displaying scam websites pretending to be from another company.

I am a fan of a small shoe company in Northamptonshire and even they have near identical fake websites where the shoes are half price. They even have a big warning about it on their homepage yet Google seem to be refuse do anything about it.

 

[LancasterRed]

It's a pretty obvious scam. I'm not even sure I could list all the giveaways, there's too many of them.

I do agree more needs to be done, it isn't as easy as just removing them from Google or Facebook as they'll keep coming back no matter what. A lawsuit could help if the evidence for who did the scam was concrete.

Fortunately the vast majority of these scams are so blatant that it isn't an issue aside from being an annoyance.

 

[Mag_seven]

Shouldn't GWR be undertaking some sort of action against FB?

 

[riceuten]

There's very little social media firms can do about repeated spam/scam posts like this except remove them when they're reported. They'll just come back from a different account with slightly different wording, though.

I'm an admin for a FB group and I've been removing similar ones to these for probably the last two years. You can catch a lot of them with wording filters, but you'll never get them all.

And if said company (not GWR) is paying for ads, probably even less incentive…

I suspect the same people who advertise £200 Asda or Aldi gift cards are responsible. Normally you have to provide the with your personal and bank details (or pay an admin fee) to get hold of the ‘gift card’

 

[Feuillesmortes]

One way to be sure an offer is genuine is by looking to see whether it has been shared by the company’s official page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on Facebook and a longer post history.

If only blue ticks still meant verified !!

 

[Bantamzen]

This is what is needed, but I don't understand why this useless government have not acted. This sort of scam being advertised on Facebook is nothing new. As I said in earlier post many of these are paid for adverts and that to me changes things legally. It is same with Google as well displaying scam websites pretending to be from another company.

I am a fan of a small shoe company in Northamptonshire and even they have near identical fake websites where the shoes are half price. They even have a big warning about it on their homepage yet Google seem to be refuse do anything about it.

Given that scammers could literally be anywhere in the world, I'm not sure what the UK government could do about it save impose some kind of China-like restrictions on UK users only being allowed to see other UK users, and that ain't going to happen. And currently there are an estimated 3.5 billion registered FB accounts, with about 2.9 billion active globally, so weeding out fake / scam / phising accounts is not going to be easy. We can report them as we see them, but keep in mind its highly likely that the scammers are reporting legitimate accounts to slow checking down, so responses may take a lot of time. I know they do take them down as I've reported some myself which eventually get dealt with, but again its just possible that for every one dodgy account that goes down two more go up.

These scammers aren't kids sitting in basements, they are often entire companies with hundreds of employees operating out of countries around the globe. Many may even be "friendly" to local authorities, meaning that even if international pressure is applied on the home governments little to nothing will be done. So it is up to those of us aware of what to look for to ensure that we help protect those that don't, even if its just an offer to family and friends to shout out if they are not sure about a "too good to be true" offer they stumble across.

 

[LAX54]

take it you saw it on FB? pops up every so often, along with the £200 supermarket vouchers, of scams all of them

 

[Re 4/4]

Yes, facebook, and as far as I can tell there's not even the usual "hide ads from this advertiser" button for this "campaign".