P&O Cruises ‘Win a Gift Bag’ Facebook Scam

According to a post currently appearing on Facebook, you can share and comment to win a gift bag containing a P&O Cruise for four people.

The post features photographs supposedly depicting the cruise gift bags.

However, the post is fraudulent. It has no connection to P&O and no amount of sharing and commenting will get you the promised gift bag. The images in the post were stolen from 2015 news reports about a Qatar Airways inaugural A350 flight. The bags contained a Qatar Airways A350 model aeroplane and an inaugural flight certificate.

The bogus giveaway post is designed to promote and gather likes for the fraudulent P&O Cruises Facebook Page that published it. By using such giveaway promotions the scammers can substantially increase the popularity and reach of their fake Page.

They can then use the Page to perpetrate further scams, this time to a greatly increased pool of potential victims.

Other fake giveaway posts on the scam Facebook Page claim that you must click a sign-up button to verify your prize entry.

However, clicking the button takes you to various dodgy survey websites that try to trick you into divulging your personal information.

Scammers regularly create fake Facebook Pages that pretend to be giving away P&O cruises and other prizes. Another version falsely claims to be giving away golden envelopes containing cruise tickets.

If one of these scam posts comes your way do not like, share, or comment on it. Don’t help the scammers by interacting with their fraudulent giveaways.

The genuine P&O Cruises Facebook Page, which has Facebook’s blue verification icon to prove its authenticity, does not mention any of these supposed giveaways. P&O has warned users about the scams via comments on its Facebook Page, noting:

For future, please always look for our page (the blue tick), and stop all correspondence with any fake pages claiming to be us.

The company also notes that it always reports the fake Pages to Facebook and does everything it can to have them removed. Unfortunately, Facebook’s response to these scams is inadequate, to say the least, and many of the scam pages remain on the network even after they have been repeatedly reported.