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Claim: The national team is giving out 100GB as a gift to celebrate Nigeria’s win.
Verdict: FALSE! We discovered that the link attached to the post had some domain issues. The link drives traffic to a website to generate sales, not to gift people data.
Full Text
People like to take advantage of trends or events to defraud others for their hard-earned money. Phishing attacks involve tricking a victim into taking action that benefits the attacker.
Amidst the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), a Facebook page, National Team 2024, posted that they wanted to celebrate the Super Eagles’ win against Angola. They claim they are gifting Nigerians 100 gigabytes of data to do this. The Facebook page requires viewers to click on a picture in the post to claim the gift.
The post, embedded with a link, has garnered 1500 likes and 82 comments since it was posted on Feb. 4, 2024.
The idyllic offer, the link attached to the claim, and its virality made us verify it.
Verification
We discovered that the Facebook page is new, with eight followers and has no information about its purpose.
An analysis of the post link using ScamDoc, a tool that evaluates the reliability of digital identities, showed that while the link met some requirements, the domain name’s owner was hidden. The link also redirects to Leadpages with an error message.
Further investigation on the Leadpage shows that it is a site that helps people transform web traffic into leads and sales.
What is a landing page?
Landing pages are often linked to social media, e-mail campaigns, search engine marketing campaigns, high-quality articles, or “affiliate accounts” to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. A landing page aims to convert site visitors into sales or leads. This explains why the Facebook page used an attractive offer to lure people to click the link.
Conclusion
The post on celebrating the national team’s victory is not to gift people data but to drive traffic to their website.
