UPDATE: We’ve got the form they setup deleted + many of you have reported them to the authorities. Read the full update
Remember Open Air Cinema, Big Water Slide, ‘Radio 1’s Big Weekend in your city’ events that pop up every few months with thousands of people claiming to be interested well this is another one of those scams.
Why do the scammers do it?
Simples, they get a large following, change the name of the group to something like ‘Student Events 2016’ and then spam the hell out of everyone with event invites to their actual events or sell the ownership of the group to someone else (often a spammer/scammer etc) for £50-£500.
Also, these groups are often related to student fresher groups, so the pages often change names to then promote club events or student tours etc.
If the scammers can’t use the pages to make profit they will run competitions (collecting your information, email address, phone number etc) and often sell your details on to whoever will buy it (although they deny this).
How do you know this one is a scam?
- The images used are owned by the BBC. Yet the BBC say this event is not affiliated with them…
- The filming of the series wasn’t done in the UK, due to health and safety.
- Last year (2015) the exact same thing happened, all the pages were changed to University Tour UK
- After changing the names they then ran competitions to win prizes (iPhones etc etc), users had to say they were attending a “Freshers’ Paint Party” at one of more than 30 cities, as well as invite 25 friends to do so.
Who are the scammers?
In the past it has been found that Volt Marketing Ltd & Electric Ents run the ‘scams’.
They run other pages (e.g. University Cribs which originally was OpenAirCinemaUK – you can tell by the auto-redirect on that link) and other events in Cardiff
Read more on LBTimes
Update (Sunday 6th March 8.30pm):
We managed to get this trending on Facebook yesterday/today ensuring other people aren’t scammed by it, unfortunately, the company quickly placed forms on the various event groups to gather user information (presumably in the hope of ‘spamming’ those people in the future), around 48,000 people clicked the links. (please read about alias emails)
However, a few other like-minded 10ways users & ourselves reported this form + all of the events to the authorities and we’ve had a response from one company (the company that hosted the form), here is the reply:
If you EVER see a scam please take the time to report it, you help to keep social media clean of crap + may prevent others from getting scammed or spammed. The report function on Facebook is ideal for any of these events if you can still see them.
If you believe a company is selling your information on or using your contact information for something you’ve not agreed to be contacted about then it’s extremely important to report them to the ICO.
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