Outline
Facebook post claims that you can click a link to get a $100 gift card from department store Kohl’s.
Brief Analysis
The promotion is not legitimate and does not come from Kohl’s. Participants will not receive a gift card. The message is a survey scam designed to trick you into divulging your personal information.
Example
Detailed Analysis
According to a post currently being distributed across Facebook, American department store chain Kohl’s is giving away $100 gift cards to users.
The post invites you to click a link to get your card.
The message features a photograph of a Kohl’s $100 gift card.
However, the message is certainly not a legitimate Kohl’s promotion. The company is not giving away $100 gift cards to people who click the link. Kohl’s has stated via its Facebook Page that the promotion is not legitimate and does not come from them.
In fact, the message is a typical survey scam designed to trick you into divulging your personal information via dodgy online surveys and offers.
If you take the bait and click the link, you will be taken to a fake Facebook page that details the steps supposedly required to get your gift card. You are asked to share the promotion with your friends, click a ‘like’ button and add a Facebook comment on the page.
But, by completing these steps, you are in fact promoting the same scam campaign to all of your Facebook friends.
Next, you will be told that you must click another link to complete a survey or offer before receiving your free gift card. The surveys or offers ask you to provide name, phone, and address information and other personal details, ostensibly to go in the draw for further prizes (see screenshot below).
But, fine print on the pages will state that your information will be shared with other marketers. Thus, you will likely be inundated with unwanted phone calls, emails, and junk mail. And, the pages often try to trick you into providing your mobile phone number, an act that actually subscribes you to an extremely expensive SMS service.
Meanwhile, the scammers who created the fake Kohl’s gift card campaign will receive commissions via underhand affiliate marketing schemes each time a user participates in a survey or offer.
And, alas, no matter how many surveys or offers you participate in, you will never receive the promised gift card.
Such survey scams are very common and have used the names of many other well-known brands. Be very wary of any message that claims that you can win an expensive prize, voucher, or gift card just by liking and sharing, and by participating in a survey.
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
