Facebook users warned of Whole Foods gift card scam

Filed Under: Facebook, Social networks

Popular organic grocery chain Whole Foods has found itself the unwelcome subject of a scam being conducted by criminals on Facebook.

Whole Foods has warned its customers that fraudulent Facebook fan pages have been created on the social networking site, promising users free $500 gift cards.

Whole Foods Facebook scam

The reality, however, is that the pages are designed to generate large lists of followers (presumably with the aim of ultimately scamming or spamming them), and to scoop up sensitive personal information.

Whole Foods has used its real Facebook page to warn customers of the danger of joining the bogus pages.

In addition, it has used another social network (Twitter) to spread word of the risk.

Whole Foods Twitter warning

As I explained last month, it's becoming far too easy for fraudsters to create bogus pages on Facebook claiming to present companies or individuals. Even though it's against Facebook's terms and conditions to do this, the onus is on individual users to report suspicious pages rather than for page creators to prove their credentials at the point of creation.

PS. Don't forget to become a Fan of Sophos on Facebook. At least that page is legitimate. :)

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About the author

Graham Cluley has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.