'Win a Pair of Facebook-Branded Adidas Shoes' Exposed as a Hoax Collecting Solicited 'Likes'

Facebook scams, sad to say, are about as common as running water in America. Everyday some new scam leaks out of the endless channels of hackers who pump up the billion-user-strong social network with clever schemes for the benefit of a quick pay-day.

The latest scam to drip onto Facebook is one that supposedly allows you to 'Win a Pair of Facebook-Branded Adidas Shoes'. Those of us old enough remember the days that a fresh new pair of classic and uniquely-branded Adidas shoes where the in-thing. Pimping a new pair of Adidas with Facebook logos plastered all over them would make for an excellent new-age piece of paraphernalia, especially if you have a chance at winning a pair just by sharing and liking a page on Facebook as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. 'Win a Pair of Facebook-Branded Adidas Shoes' Facebook Hoax designed to collect user LIKES – Source: Hoax Slayer

This scam was discovered on Facebook recently where scammers claim that they are giving away 3,289 pairs of Facebook-branded Adidas shows to those who share and like their Facebook page. The page exploits an actually legitimate pair of Facebook-branded Adidas shoes created by Glasgow designer Gerry Mckay. The hoax has absolutely nothing to do with Adidas or any other legitimate entity.

You are probably wondering what the scammers get out of harvesting likes and shares to their bogus Facebook-Branded Adidas Shows hoax. It is rather simple; the cybercrooks are collecting as many LIKES as they can on their Facebook page so it can later be sold on the black market. Due to the high demand for popularized social network pages, such as business pages on Facebook, those seeking on the black market are willing to pay a decent amount of money for a Facebook page consisting of thousands of followers or 'LIKES'. The persons who purchase the page can later exploit the followers by offering some other type of product or scam.

We must all remember that most offers that claim to give away merchandise or even cash winnings are usually scams. If such an offer is legitimate, it will be mentioned on the home page of the related company.