There are so many fake facebook pages out there trying to get us to click the like and share buttons with competitions and giveaways. So many of these facebook competitions are actually fake sadly.

There are a number of reasons why someone would set up a fake facebook page and competition even though sometimes they seem a bit unfathomable! But mostly they want us to like and share stuff so that more people like their page and maybe they can get hold of all our details and that of our friends to spam us with stuff or do even worse.

There have been pages and apps that have managed even more sinister things like posting spam on our behalf that appears on other pages and perhaps getting data from our email accounts and using that for their own (usually spam) purposes, but worst of all they could steal your identity and maybe even sell that information off to other people.

There are a lot of pages that promise prizes like a brand new car if you like and share their page. Another popular one is that you could win airline tickets from a well known airline to celebrate an anniversary and recently there was a fake Ikea facebook page promising £5,000 in vouchers to a lucky visitor to their store on it’s opening day.

Others promise that someone will win a villa or a holiday. With these competitions you need to follow the old adage – if it looks too good to be true then… well you know the rest.

So if you are wondering how can you tell if a facebook page is fake then start by looking at some of the following points:

• If it is a big company then it should have the blue verified tick that facebook give to established companies so check for that.
• How many likes does the page have – does it purport to be a big company and if so does it have as many like as you would expect it to? Many pages that promise giveaways from a company may only have a thousand or so likes and this should ring alarm bells to start with.
• Is the company name spelled correctly? This might seem basic but you would be surprised how many are not quite spelled right because the actual company has taken the correctly spelled page name.
• When was the page set up? If it was only set up a few months (or even days) ago then it is possibly fake – established companies will have had their facebook pages for quite a while by now. Check if all the posts showing were just added.
• Does it have any contact information on it? Can you see a phone number, address etc in the about section? Reputable companies will definitely want this information to be obvious on their page so that you can contact them.
• Is the spelling and grammar good? Companies will likely have someone who has good spelling and grammar updating their information.
• Do they use lots of unnecessary punctuation? If you see more than one exclamation mark on something then that should also ring alarm bells!

So if you see a friend has liked a page that promises prizes that sound fantastic then just have a quick look at the page itself before you start sharing it around.

Here is a particular example:

A competition to win a villa (yes real actual ownership of a whole villa – does that smell fishy already?) with a company called James Villas. Here is the fake page:

Note that there is no contact information and only 7k likes.

But it has been copied from the genuine page here: