Facebook pages like Trending WorldWide are spammy, like-farming pages
A Facebook page with the name “Trending WorldWide” is a like-farming page that sets up fake competition to lure visitors to spammy marketing webpages.
The page posts several posts each week, each one claiming to give away an expensive gift or holiday. Each posts claims that in order to enter, the user must like, share and comment on the post.
However, once users do this, they are subsequently contacted by the page and told to click the sign up button on their page. This button links to the webpage of a marketing company whose aim is to harvest user’s emails, phone numbers and other contact information so they can be the target for unsolicited marketing calls.
Facebook pages like Trending WorldWide act as bait to lure visitors to spammy marketing websites by posting fake competitions. This is a popular ploy by like-farming scammers, who are likely to receive a commission for each person they refer to the marketing websites.
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When it comes to entering competitions on Facebook, we recommend sticking to competitions run by the official (blue ticked) pages of established brands or the genuine pages of local brands. That means avoiding anonymous Facebook pages that don’t appear to be representing a real business or entity.
Additionally, if the Facebook page appears to be only posting competitions claiming you can win by sharing and liking a post, it’s most likely going to be a like-farming page designed to harvest your contact information.
How did we know the Trending WorldWide Facebook page is a like-farming page?
There are a number of signs that give this scheme away, including –
It doesn’t represent a business. There is no business called Trending WorldWide. It’s just the name given to the Facebook page.
There are no legitimate contact details. The phone number provided comes up as unavailable, and the address vaguely states a road in Belfast. The email provided lead to a third party marketing website.
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All the pages posts is competitions. At the top of the page, the most recent post made an hour ago offers a Christmas trip to New York. Below that a competition to the Seychelles. Below that another New York Christmas trip. All the posts are competitions that ask you to share and like them, where you will then be asked to click the Sign Up page which leads to a third party marketing company.
Clicking the Sign Up page takes you to a third party marketing webpage that cannot determine what Facebook post you interacted with. The small print states that your contact information will be entered into a marketing database, used by marketing company to make marketing calls. This page is unrelated to the Facebook page, as such the prizes it may offer will not match those advertised by the Facebook page.
All in all, the Trending WorldWide Facebook page is just a scheme to lure visitors to third party marketing websites where you’ll most certainly not win a thing other than a queue of spammers waiting to solicit you through phone, text and email.
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