News sites are warning everyone of a possible Facebook Christmas Bonus scam. With the spirit of gift-giving on Christmas holidays, companies take the opportunity to give gifts, token and bonuses to their workers and patrons, as a way of thanking them for their hard work, dedication and loyalty or simply share with them blessings.
Con artists also take the opportunity to act and scam billions of people on social media, like Facebook to earn during the holidays as well. They look for Facebook users and clone someone's Facebook page to be in business. Their message of "good tidings" will tell that a user have won money, warned ABC's Wate 6.
With 1.5 billion active accounts on Facebook, the cons have plenty of targets; and it is difficult to track online identity thieves because they operate overseas or acorss state lines.
Earlier this month, Cindy Fowler found a post from a friend of a friend, Piper Terry, telling her she won $25,000 on a Christmas bonus, allegedly from an "ongoing seasonal Facebook Christmas bonus promotion." When Fowler asked who is behind the money, it said: "It's Facebook Freedom award promotion in collaboration with Powerball Management.' People see that and they'll say it's Powerball. It's got to be up and up, it's Powerball. It's not Powerball."
When in his SMS, Piper Terry asked for personal information, like email address, occupation, income and mother's name, Fowler detected it was phony and did not give the information.
A similar incident happened to Brenda Parton last year. Parton received a Facebook Christmas bonus message coming from a friend named Joyce. "Well it wasn't an hour after I had friended her that she sent me a message on messenger. She asked me if I had got my Christmas bonus," Parton shared. She was told she "won $50,000 dollars and an Apple laptop." She said she never heard anything about a Facebook Christmas bonus and was instructed the deal with the Facebook agent.
James Hall, the agent told her she was on the list of winners but when he started to ask for money, she suspected it was not real.
Facebook warns its users to be wary about scams via its website. The scammers would clone someone's account and find victims among the friends of that account. This time of the year, a Facebook Christmas bonus message may surface again and again.
"I know from your television stories that this is not normal. And I told them right out, I believe this is a scam. I believe you are going to hurt people." Fowler said. "I would delete it and forget it. there is nothing free in life, I have found that out. And if you actually won that kind of money, they wouldn't ask for your occupation. They wouldn't ask for your mother's maiden name, or your mother's name. And I'm not doing it, I'm not giving this information away."
Daily Star also warned users to be cautious about a Facebook Christmas Bonus that scammers would say comes from Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to celebrate his becoming a new dad.
