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In July 2019, Facebook users began seeing posts advertising an $80 coupon offer for the H-E-B supermarket chain: These posts were the latest iteration of the common free coupon or free gift card scams that frequently plague social media. The fraudulent social media posts falsely proclaimed the distribution of H-E-B coupons was in honor of the store's 50th anniversary (HEB is giving free $80 coupon per family to celebrate its 50th anniversary!), although the chain was founded in 1905 (and thus is approaching its 114th anniversary). Those postings also linked to sites (such as www.heb.com-jul.com) not actually affiliated with the chain. These fake coupon offers are a form of survey scam that typically instructs shoppers to follow three simple steps in order to get a free gift card. Once the steps are completed, however, users are not greeted with a coupon code: Instead, they are asked to fill out a survey and provide personal information such as home address, telephone number, e-mail address, and date of birth. Users are also required to sign up for credit cards or enroll in subscription programs in order to obtain their free gift cards. These fraudulent surveys are quite popular on Facebook. If you frequently use Facebook, there is a good chance that you'll run into one of these survey scams again. A July 2014 article from the Better Business Bureau listed key factors for identifying fraudulent Facebook posts: H-E-B offers their genuine digital coupons to shoppers at https://www.heb.com/static-page/coupons.
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