On September 25th, the Facebook page ‘SPAR Georgia’ published a post announcing that to celebrate the 90th anniversary of “SPAR,” everyone who shares the mentioned post and writes “done” in the comments section will receive a special gift bag. The post includes several photos, including photos of gift bags with the Spar logo.
‘SPAR Georgia’ posted a link to Google Sites in the post’s comments section and encouraged users to sign up.
The newly-created fake Facebook page announces a false giveaway in the name of the “SPAR” supermarket chain. The official page of “SPAR” has denied the giveaway and called the viral post fake. In addition, the site published by Spar’s fake page was created on Google Sites. Notably, none of the photos used in the post was taken in Georgia and is unrelated to the alleged giveaway.
The Georgian official Facebook page of SPAR called the post published by the newly-created page false information and noted that all real giveaways are announced on Spar’s official Facebook page and website.
Spar Georgia – the page that announced the giveaway was created on the day of publication of the post, September 25th. On the same day, another “giveaway” post appeared on the page, which again asked users to sign up on the link given in the comments.
The fake page uses a cover photo identical to Spar’s official page, with information on the photo referring to the supermarket’s online call service. Despite the similar design, it is not difficult to recognize the fake page since it has only 916 followers, while Spar’s official Facebook page, created in 2014, has 195,000 followers.
| FAKE SPAR Georgia |  |
| REAL SPAR Georgia |  |
As for the website that the fake SPAR Georgia encourages users to sign up for, it claims to be SPAR’s official website, but instead of the company’s official name, the website features the name ‘Halaman Muka.’
The mentioned site is created using Google Sites. Anyone with a Google Account can create their own small website at sites.google.com, and once the site is created, it is automatically added to Google Drive and can be edited in real-time with other Google users who have access to the content.
It should be noted that the site bears the name of Halaman Muka, which is probably the name and surname of a specific person. On August 13th, 2020, a Google user exposed another Google site called Halaman Muka as a scam, and several other users agreed with him in the comments section.
The fake page of SPAR Georgia uses several photos to gain credibility, but none of them was taken in Georgia and has nothing to do with the giveaway.
Photo N1 – Croatia 2020
The first photo shows the opening of a new Spar branch in Čakovec, Croatia in 2020. As for the prize card that the people in the photo are holding, it reflects Spar’s donation to Chakovec Maternity.
Photo N2 – Indonesia, 2020
The second photo was also taken in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, but it has nothing to do with SPAR. The photo shows bags of food products that the office of the Indonesian president has given to up to 2 million low-income families affected by the pandemic. The gift bags are wrapped in red, but in photos taken from a different angle, the logo of the Indonesian presidential palace on the bags is visible.
Photo N3 – Hungary, 2021
The third photo was taken in Hungary in 2021 and showed packages of sandwiches for epidemiologists. Together with the non-profit organization Etesd, “SPAR Hungary” allocated a thousand sandwiches a week for the medical workers actively involved in the fight against the pandemic.
False giveaways in the name of various companies have been fact-checked by “Myth Detector” in the past as well. For more information, see our articles:
- Information About the Fake “Hyundai Georgia” Giveaway Disseminated on Facebook
- Newly-created Fake Page of “BEKO” Promises Gifts to Facebook Users
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions
