Target and Walmart are giving away or donating hundreds of refrigerators and ovens on Facebook.
On Aug. 16, 2022, we received mail from our readers that asked if Facebook pages named Target Fans and Walmart Fans were legitimately giving away or donating hundreds of refrigerators and ovens. The truth was that these pages were nothing more than the first step of potentially dangerous survey scams. The scammers appeared to be based in Indonesia.
The posts showed pictures of refrigerators and ovens (ranges) with the caption, βWe are happy to announce that we will be donating 670 refrigerators and cookers which cannot be sold due to a few scratches and minor damage, all machines are in working order, so we will send them randomly to someone who writes βDONEβ before August 19th!β
A search of Facebook for the words Target Fans and the lowercase and special characters π°ππ₯π¦ππ«π πππ§π¬ showed dozens of pages that were hosting the survey scams.
Survey scams like the one for the Target refrigerators giveaway are a specific kind of ruse. They promise big prizes up front, but then lead to a seemingly endless number of surveys with other tantalizing prizing promises, such as a $750 transfer via the mobile finance app, Cash App. Usually, the scammers who created the Facebook posts are hoping that users sign up for…
