Watch Out for Bogus Social Media Giveaways of Gaming PCs
Important lessons learned Social media accounts use staged photographs to give away gaming PCs in an effort to increase their impressions and following. It is a simple, low-risk fraud because the con artists never have to provide evidence of the existence of a prize. Though genuine freebies are unlikely to come from random accounts, you can use reverse image searches to find the origins of PC giveaway photographs. Indeed, gaming PCs are pricey. You will need to spend a good deal of money and look much beyond a console if you want something significantly more powerful. It follows that giving away gaming PCs will always garner a lot of interest, which is the core of a bothersome hoax.
That Computer Image Could Be From Anywhere
Typically, an account on a social media site shares a picture of an exquisite gaming PC and then announces that anyone who follows and shares the post will enter a drawing. The issue is that anyone can easily snap a picture of a gorgeous PC build online and share it. It is not proof that they have anything to give away only because they have a picture of the system.
At the same time, if you have a paid account, there is a great incentive to increase your following and post impressions. As long as enough impressions are obtained, the motivation behind the engagement is essentially irrelevant. Even accounts that are not made money yet may be working to reach the necessary number of impressions and followers. Additionally, there is the practice of creating sizable accounts, which are subsequently sold to other parties for personal use.
Nobody Is Offering Pricey Computers in Exchange for Likes and Follows
It is absurd, if you take five seconds to consider it, for someone to give away a computer valued at thousands of dollars in exchange for a small number of likes and followers. Almost every week, a "giveaway" is held by some of these accounts. That makes sense if a company that manufactures gaming PCs uses an account with tens of thousands of followers to give away a couple each year. They basically use it as a portion of their marketing budget, and they do not pay retail for their parts anyhow! Unknown, random accounts attempting to gain popularity? More fishy than the ocean smells that one.
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| An official laptop gaming competition from NVIDIA's verified social media accounts. |
A Reverse Image Search Is Available
Even though con artists can obtain photos from anywhere, it is still easy to identify the source of the image. To find out where a photo originated, you can utilize a variety of reverse image search engines. Reverse image searches do not, however, guarantee that the giveaway is authentic, even if they yield no results. In reality, there is almost little possibility that the offer is genuine unless the competition is supported by a well-known organization, such as a business with an address. Even in the unlikely event that the giveaway is genuine, it is an unofficial contest run by an unknown individual. Therefore, there are still obligations and possibly even legal concerns associated with taking part.
Con artists Never Need to Show That There Was a Prize
The most brilliant aspect of this con is that the perpetrators never have to provide evidence that a prize was ever awarded or that anyone was given a free PC in the first place. Announcing the winner and informing them that they were approached privately is all that is required. Some would even go so far as to make up accounts in order to select themselves as the "winner" of a reward that never was awarded. Alternatively, if a genuine "prize" exists, they can discreetly give it to a fictitious winner on multiple occasions.
It really does not matter if people find out later on that it was all a hoax. The bulk of the individuals who liked the post, reposted it, and followed the account will never know or undo those acts, thus you have already lost your time and your impressions. Thus, from the perspective of the con artists, the drawbacks are minimal. Perhaps you believe that these kinds of scams are generally innocuous, but if you really think about it, you can easily avoid them. They might also be the starting point for a smaller kind of fraud, such one in which the “winner” is demanded to pay import and shipping costs for a nonexistent machine. You would be better off not taking part in any case.