One thing I am constantly finding on my Facebook wall are posts claiming that if I “like” or “comment” or “share” the post I will win a Disney Cruise, a free round-the-world flight on Jetstar, a Mercedes convertible or an expensive diamond necklace. Here is a tip: if you have been tempted to give it a go, DON’T. The Facebook page making these ludicrous claims is a fake site that has been set up by scammers who are looking to phish for new page likes.

No-one ever wins the cruise, the flights, the cars or the jewellery.

But what happens when I like this page? I hear you ask. Well, the fake promotions that get posted on the page are part of a scam to falsely inflate fan numbers for pages, which are then sold and renamed with all traces of the fake promotion removed. So you might be liking what you think is a page for Jetstar but it’s actually a scam site that months down the line could appear in your newsfeed as a porn site!

The best way to tell if a page is fake is to actually click on the page itself and go right to the bottom to see when the page was created. Odds are, the page will have only been created within the last month. Jetstar has been around for years so I can’t see them only creating a page a month ago.

The big companies like Jetstar, Qantas, Disney Cruises, Mercedes etc already have a Facebook page and this page has been verified as being the official company page and as such has a big blue tick next to the company name. If the competition claiming to be from a big multi-national company is not coming from a page with a big blue tick then that’s pretty much a guarantee it’s fake. Don’t fall for the scam.

Finally, not only are you compromising the security your Facebook account by liking and sharing these pages, you are also annoying all of your Facebook friends who can see that the page is a scam and who cannot understand how you could be so gullible to fall for it.