Is Ellen doing a Christmas giveaway on Facebook? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

Various Facebook links claim that TV host Ellen is holding a “Christmas giveaway” on Facebook, and those that share a link or follow a Facebook page can – or will – win money or expensive prizes.

FALSE

TLDR: While TV host Ellen does hold many competitions, such online competitions are promoted by her official 32-million strong Facebook page. As such, any giveaways promoted outside of that official Facebook page are fake.

Examples of such fake links can be seen below.

Hello All!!!
I will choose people randomly on Facebook everyone who *shares* will receive gift cards, cash and big winners can win cars & homes “Share now” don’t miss !!! We watch
Until the weekend !!! I Will choose 20 lucky people $50,000,000 each only follows instructions…
Step 1-Like
Step 2-Share
Step 3-Comment “I Win”

Scammers prolifically try and target fans of TV host Ellen, especially during the end of the year as Christmas approaches. This is typically achieved by setting up fake Facebook pages using Ellen’s name and claiming that those who like the page and share its posts can win large amounts of money or expensive prizes.

This is a popular type of scam on Facebook, commonly known as like-farming. Scammers are posting fake content in a bid to try and deceive Facebook users into engaging with a Facebook page and its posts. Such fake pages will frequently try and lure social media users to spammy marketing websites by claiming a user needs to visit such sites to claim their prize or enter the giveaway.


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There are several red flags when spotting a fake Ellen giveaway scam. These include –

– They are posted from newly created Facebook pages that are not verified. You can use Facebook’s on-age Transparency tool to see when a particular Facebook page was created. The official Ellen Facebook page was created a number of years ago, has 32 million followers and has Facebook’s “verified” blue tick next to the page name. (You can see it here.) Fake pages have none of those attributes.

– Fake promotions will ask you to share a post as well as comment on the post, and will claim a winner is selected randomly from those that perform those actions.

– Such scams frequently point to spammy, third party websites that have nothing to do with Ellen or her TV show.

Of course these scams don’t just target Ellen, and do not occur only in the run up to Christmas, but the above red flags can be used to distinguish between nearly all fake celebrity Facebook giveaway scams.

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