Everyone loves a good deal; especially Facebook users.
Well, some scammers are cashing in on this latest scam, claiming you can get two free Southwest Airlines tickets, just for filling out a survey online.
The scam says they're celebrating Southwest's 88th Anniversary. We did some digging and found that Southwest Airlines was founded on March 15,1967. That means the company is only 50-years-old. That was the first red flag of this scam.
Another thing we noticed, in the Facebook headline, the "W" is capitalized in Southwest. Southwest's official logo has the "w" as a lower-case letter.
So what about the URL? Here's where you can really tell if a post is a fake. The Facebook post will show the website URL in light gray text under the title. These posts link to websites like freesouthwest.us or southy.us for this particular scam. The airline's actual website is www.southwest.com. You only want to click posts that link to official .com websites registered by the company posting the link.
Here's an example of one of the posts being shared on Facebook right now:
So why do scammers do this? They want you to click. Then they want you to fill out your personal information so that they can fill your email inbox with a crazy amount of marking campaigns. Then, they want you to share the post with your friends and keep the scam circulating on Facebook, ultimately, claiming more victims.
Even Snopes.com has confirmed the Southwest post is a scam. They will never give away free air travel tickets to those who follow online links.
Moral of the story, if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
