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A British Airways Black Friday WhatsApp giveaway scam goes viral

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We had a few emails from readers who have seen a British Airways Black Friday giveaway promotion pop up in their WhatsApp feed, forwarded by a friend. Given the amount of Google traffic to a post about this in our forums, it must be very widespread.

There are elements to it which are convincing, although the language and imagery used should be enough to raise your suspicions.

BA has confirmed to us that it is, indeed, a scam.

British Airways Black Friday Whatsapp scam giveaway

This is what you may see in your feed. It will be forwarded by someone you know, because winners are obliged to forward the offer to 20 friends in order to ‘validate’ their prize.

British Airways Black Friday Whatsapp scam giveaway

This is vaguely realistic, although the colour and font used at the top – plus of course the URL – should concern you.

When you click through, you get this:

British Airways Black Friday Whatsapp scam giveaway

There are elements of this which look real, although issues with the English – ‘2’ instead of ‘two’, the clunky ‘Do you know British Airways?’ question, the weird ‘Greetings’ salutation – would be a flag to most.

Let’s not mention the use of an A380 for a European flight giveaway.

What IS realistic is the prize. Offer 5,000 First Class flights to Sydney and no one is going to believe you. Offer 5,000 economy flights to Europe over the quiet Winter period and it sounds perfectly reasonable.

Rhys has never knowingly turn down the chance of a free flight, so ploughed on. Amazingly, he was a winner:

British Airways Black Friday Whatsapp scam giveaway

Interesting use of 1990’s ticket stock there …..

This is where it went weird though. When he clicked ‘ok’, he was taken to a totally different scam claim page. Suddenly he was thanked for filling in an Amazon customer survey and congratulating him on winning a new iPhone in return for £2 postage!

Unsurprisingly, British Airways told us:

We are aware of a fraudulent promotion that is being shared via WhatsApp and social media, which has been reported. This message is not from British Airways and we advise anyone who receives it not to click any links and to report it as spam or delete it.

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British Airways and Avios

Comments (55)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • lumma says:
    9 Nov9 November 05:18

    I like how it’s using the Soviet Union’s top level .su domain.

    Very retro.

  • Jan M says:
    9 Nov9 November 05:26

    My mother in law will doubtless send this to me, and I can never work out if she likes me or just the freebies. 😝

    • Skywalker says:
      9 Nov9 November 08:15

      I would wager the opposite – that the mother in law can’t stand you: she knows it’s a scam and hopes you fall prey to it

      😉 😀

  • riku says:
    9 Nov9 November 05:41

    >>There are elements to it which are convincing….winners are obliged to forward the offer to 20 friends in order to ‘validate’ their prize.

    Are there really so many people who don’t know about being careful with clicking on links?
    You don’t need to know anything about which planes are used for different routes to know that something from British Airways that has links which don’t start with britishairways.com is suspect. More so when you’re expected to forward it to lots of other people!

    • Marc says:
      9 Nov9 November 06:59

      I’ve encountered many of these links and questioned friends/family as to why they have followed the links etc. They’ve all said very similar things; “but what if it is real”, “there isn’t any harm”, “oh it’s just a bit of fun – live a little!”.

      Even answering these comments they still say they’d do it again. Mind boggling.

      • Andrew says:
        9 Nov9 November 09:14

        It’s people that show a complete unwillingness to pay any really attention to technology that I have no sympathy for.

        Relatives that I set secure passwords for their email and IDs one month and write them down, next month “Oh I reset them all to ‘fluffy1’ because I couldn’t remember them” – girl bye 👋🏼

        The internet is more dangerous to you than driving a car.

        • Mike Hunt says:
          9 Nov9 November 13:57

          oh no fluffy1 is my password too, although I think with a capital F

  • vol says:
    9 Nov9 November 06:35

    The minute you see “BA” and “giveaway” in the same sentence, you should know it’s a scam 😄

    Didn’t know the .su domain was still available, but here we are tovarishchi.

    Hopefully nobody has bitten 🤦‍♀️

    Thanks for the heads up.

    • Dubious says:
      9 Nov9 November 09:32

      😆 very true. It would have fooled more people had it included the word’s enhancements in the headline.

  • Gordon says:
    9 Nov9 November 06:36

    This type of scam is fairly common unfortunately, So I am not surprised to see this on hfp this morning, There have been a few that promote a Sainsbury voucher in return for information. Believe it or not there are many gullible people that are taken in by these type of scams especially now when people are struggling financially, As they are blinded to the dangers by the opportunity of actually obtaining something for nothing. It does not cost anything to send family and loved ones a message (Especially the elderly). Warning them of these type of scams. I do this regularly. Better to be safe than sorry….

  • Callum says:
    9 Nov9 November 06:57

    I hope Rhys has a lovely time in Capetown!

  • BC8 says:
    9 Nov9 November 07:22

    Funnily enough I was forwarded the exact same scam by my mother in law, except that it is in Italian and for ITA airways. Fortunately, she was savvy enough to realise it was a scam.

  • PeteM says:
    9 Nov9 November 07:43

    Compared to this the TAP phishing email I posted about yesterday is a complete masterpiece 🤣

    • AJA says:
      9 Nov9 November 08:09

      I got that TAP phishing email. I was quite impressed that my email provider had worked out it was a scam as it went into my spam folder automatically. I assume it was a result of TAP’s data breach earlier this year. I deleted it without opening.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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