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  • 2020-11-30 (xsd:date)
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  • Costco 'Free Grocery Box' Scam (en)
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  • On Nov. 29, 2020, a Facebook page purporting to represent Costco, a chain of membership-only warehouse stores, posted a message offering a free grocery box to anyone who shared and commented on their post. The message was purportedly written by Costco's CEO Craig Jelinek (whose name was misspelled Jelinekand in this scam Facebook post due to a typo): This message was not posted on Costco's official page and it was not written by the company's CEO. This is a scam that was shared by an imposter Facebook page. A nearly identical version of this scam (with Aldi swapped in for Costco) was also shared on social media in November 2020. Costco has not commented on this scam offer yet, but Aldi posted a message to Facebook alerting their customers about the scam: One indication that this free Costco grocery box offer is a scam is that it did not originate on Costco's Facebook page. Rather, this message was shared to a page called Costco US, whereas Costco's real page is called Costco. Here's a screenshot of the real page (left) that has a verified symbol and the fake page (right), which does not. Social media users could have also clicked the Page Transparency button on Facebook to unearth some more details about this fake page. In this case, the page transparency button reveals that the scam Costco US page was created on Nov. 29, the same day that this free grocery box scam started to circulate. It would be unusual, to say the least, for Costco to start an entirely new page (one that its shoppers do not know about) in order to host a giveaway. A reverse image search on the included photos also shows that this page is not on the up-and-up. The image supposedly showing free Costco grocery boxes is actually several years old and did not originally show boxes adorned with the Costco logo. The original image (below) shows plain cardboard boxes. The scammers inserted a digital version of the Costco logo in order to make it seem like the store was truly giving away boxes of groceries. A similar scam involving the grocery store Aldi also used a doctored version of this image: The best way to tell that this offer is a scam, however, is to ask yourself a simple question: Does it seem too good to be true? This type of scam is commonplace on social media. A fraudulent page (in this case a fake Costco page) posts an especially appealing offer (free grocery boxes) and then asks social media users to like, share, or comment on the post. This ensures that the scam message will spread to as many people as possible, which gives the fraudsters a better chance of success. Success, in this case, is people being tricked into parting with personal information, such as email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers. We've had many occasions to alert readers to this kind of fraud: The Better Business Bureau offers consumers several general tips to avoid getting scammed: (en)
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