A scam Currys PC World page claims it’s giving away Samsung TVs for free, but the page is fake and just wants to draw you in – here’s why.
A fake Facebook account, using the Currys logo, shared two posts in June, claiming to be giving away Samsung televisions.
The posts claimed that the TVs had ‘slight scratches’ and could no longer be sold by the retailer.
People were told to like the page, share the post and tag their friends, in order to spread the message.
James, who notified us about the page, told us:
“It was one of those Facebook posts where it captures your attention. I saw it and thought I’ve got nothing to lose here, I’ll share it and see what happens”
He quickly unshared the post after receiving messages from friends explaining the posts were from a fraudulent account. Here’s exactly what the posts looked like:

If you come across one of them, make sure you don’t share it or comment on it. You can also report the posts to Facebook, which told us:
“There’s no place for fraudulent or inauthentic behaviour on Facebook, and we have removed the Page in question.
We have a safety and security team working to keep our platforms safe and we invest in artificial intelligence technology so we can find and block millions of inauthentic accounts every day”
How does this scam work?
You may be wondering what the scam element is here – what happens once you’ve liked and shared the page?
Just like old-fashioned chain mail, once you’ve passed it on you allow the page to gain more and more exposure and build up its following.
In fact, this one managed to amass an audience of 56,214 ‘likes’ before it was removed.

Once a page has that sort of following it becomes both valuable and attractive to other interests – the page could be passed/sold on to others.
They can then change its name and images and use it to push scams or other agendas on its large audience.
We’ve seen the same thing happen with Twitter accounts, which use ‘pass it on’ style competitions to build up a following.
How to spot fake social media pages
Major retailers like Currys will often have a blue tick next to their real social media accounts – it means the page has been verified as belonging to the organisation or company.
In this case, a Currys spokesperson told us:
“We would like to reassure our customers that all our social media channels are continually monitored for fake accounts by our customer services teams and colleagues.
All fake accounts are immediately reported to the appropriate social media platform to have the account closed down as soon as possible.
We would encourage customers to only engage with our genuine, verified accounts which carry the ‘blue tick’ badge”
If you see a competition being shared on Facebook or any other social media platform, make sure to check there’s a blue tick next to the company’s name before sharing or engaging with it.
However, the absence of a blue tick doesn’t guarantee the page isn’t genuine either, so you should also be sure to carry out other checks.
Take a look at how many followers and likes the page has, look out for the usual signs, such as spelling and grammatical errors, and see if the page is linked to from the brand’s genuine website.
Have you seen a similar Facebook scam doing the rounds? Let us know in the comments, so we can continue to report them and warn others.