On Facebook, beware of the “free” Decathlon bike scam

It is a well-crafted scam that has been actively circulating on Facebook for over a month. The page “FANS of Decathlon”, with the colors of the sports franchise, promises “donations” of hundreds of mountain bikes “that cannot be sold due to small scratches”.

According to the message, all you have to do is post your favorite color in the comments and lucky winners will be drawn. The scam regularly returns to Facebook since voice of the north I had already mentioned this case at the end of August. In recent days the message has reappeared, triggering an avalanche of comments in an attempt to win the mountain bike.

This is obviously a scam as the moderator of the page systematically responds to comments to fill out an online form to earn the profit. In other cases, it is simply a matter of subscribing to the Facebook page, which will be transformed later to better launch phishing, or even sharing the “offer” in their active groups.

A recent Facebook post, still online, had a total of 1.2 million comments and nearly 20,000 shares. The last one, published on September 14, already had 800 comments.

The scam also appears in other languages, in English or even Portuguese.

not the first

Decathlon has already warned against this scam. The Belgian subsidiary thus warned last month of these false gifts. “We have reported the malicious pages on relevant social networks. If you are exposed to these pages yourself, please report them as ‘spam,'” the company wrote on its own Facebook page.

Contacted by the Zataz.com site, the parent company specifies that “its legal teams are currently in contact with Facebook to put an end to these acts.”

This is not the first time that the Decathlon brand has been used for a scam. Last year, the promise of a 1,000-euro gift card had already circulated on social networks and WhatsApp. To protect yourself against these scams and phishing in general, it’s best to be wary of offers that are too good to be true. You can also find best practices to avoid social media scams in our article.