On December 13th, 2022, the Facebook page “TBC – Secret Santa” published information about the alleged Christmas game initiated by the company TBC. According to the last post published by the page, TBC will give away Mercedes-Benz GLE or its value in cash. In order to participate in the lottery, Facebook users have to like and share the post, like the page itself, write any random number from 1 to 10000 in the comments section and send the same number as a private message to the page. According to the description, the lottery will take place on December 31st, at 23:40 live on “Mtavari Arkhi.”
Information about the lottery under the name “TBC – Secret Santa” is being disseminated by a fake Facebook page. A representative of TBC bank denied any connection between the said lottery, page and TBC bank.
“Myth Detector” contacted the representative of TBC bank. Tamta Kupradze, head of TBC’s strategic communications, denied the information, noting that the page and the lottery were not created by TBC’s initiative. According to her, there have been cases of the creation of fake pages and fake giveaways in the name of TBC in the past as well.
The fake Facebook page “TBC – Secret Santa” was created on November 28th, 2022, under the name of TBC.
The contact information section on the page indicates Tbilisi, Georgia, as the contact location; however, the section features the postal code of Kutaisi – 4600.
The website TBCSecret.ge indicated in the page description is inactive.
According to the information available on DomainTools, the website ‘tbcsecret.ge’ was created on December 12th, 2022. The domain was most likely purchased for the sole reason of making the Facebook page look more credible and convincing to the public.
Notably, one of the conditions of the lottery is to send a direct message to the page. After writing, all participants receive an automatic reply. According to the text, the user is among the Top 5 lucky participants and must forward the said page to 20 of their friends to like it in order to keep their winning place.
In addition, on June 4th, 2022, an identical image of the car with the same description and emojis was published by the Facebook page ‘Arena • არენა.’
Notably, this is not the first case when fake Facebook pages use the names and logos of famous brands to attract social media followers. For more on the topic, see the articles prepared by “Myth Detector:”
- Information About the Fake “Hyundai Georgia” Giveaway Disseminated on Facebook
- The Fake Giveaway in the Name of ‘SPAR Georgia’ Aims to Mislead Facebook Users
- Newly-created Fake Page of “BEKO” Promises Gifts to Facebook Users
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