Be careful if you are a client of Action en France! Facebook pages pretend to be the very popular store brand by offering to win prizes. This is a scam designed to collect personal data.
Like any good self-respecting social network, Facebook is home to its share of scams – loan offers with a particularly low interest rate, phishing links, romance or employment scams… messages from strangers and offers that are too good to be true, the danger can also come from public pages, which allow professionals, companies, celebrities and associations to publicize their activities and easily get in touch with users. The scam of the moment is discreet but effective, and has already claimed tens of thousands of victims. This is a set of pages called Action fans which were created at the end of the year and which offer to win many gifts and free products via contests, by pretending to be the Dutch chain of stores. And as much to say that it works, given that the brand is very popular in France – it has just celebrated its tenth anniversary in France – with its dense product offer (DIY, home, decoration, multimedia, hygiene and beauty, toys…) and its very low prices!
Action Fans Facebook: A simple but effective lottery scam
The principle and operation of this scam are extremely simple. The page, which uses Action’s graphic charter and posts many photos of gifts, promises fans of the channel to offer them many products and discounts. Under each post, she asks users to write a specific word, such as “Win” or “Happy New Year” for example, in the comment. This is a way to boost the popularity of the page, and thus gain visibility in order to attract more victims. Then, the scammers respond to the victim’s comment in order to invite him to validate his registration for the fake contest by clicking on the “Register” button at the very top of the page, which leads to a form. Of course, there is nothing to gain and it is only a means of recovering personal data…
It is neither more nor less than a lottery scam, which are carried out from accounts or pages impersonating someone or an organization. The various pages in question were created at the beginning of December 2022 and have many subscribers. The most popular has nearly 50,000, while smaller ones accumulate 10,000, 1,000 or even 3,200 subscribers/victims. In all, about fifteen pages, classified in different categories (Real estate, Shopping center, Bike shop, Restaurant…), have been created. As a reminder, the real Action brand only communicates on Facebook via its official page. Action Francerecognizable by its “Verified” logo in the margin of its title.
