A new scam on Instagram and Facebook uses Adidas, the sporting goods manufacturer, to attract users with a fake promotion since Monday (20). The fake “adidasinfluenciadores” profile distributes a misleading chain via Stories to convince users to follow a page, hoping to earn alleged Adidas gift cards and kits of Adidas clothing and accessories monthly.
Questioned by dnetc, Adidas denied the existence of the promotion on Instagram and confirmed the suspected fraud. “The fake adidasinfluenciadores profile yesterday published a promotion in which adidas allegedly recruits influencers. Like the profile, the promotion is fake. Adidas is taking the necessary steps to punish those responsible, and reinforces that it communicates exclusively through its official channel @adidasbrasil ”, said the company in a note.
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Coup promises Adidas kits to attract victims on Instagram and Facebook – Photo: Reproduction / Instagram
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The misleading statement on social media asks the user to follow the fake page and reposts the recruitment ad in Stories. The promise is to select 100 people to work as digital influencers for the company, receiving products to use for free in exchange for publications on the Internet. In addition to relaying the message, the criminals request that the victim have at least 200 followers.
There were variations in the blow throughout the day, with the secondary profiles “adidasinfluenciadores2” and “adidasexpansor”. In the latter case, the request for alleged candidates for influencer vacancies goes from 100 to 300 people.
It is not yet known how many victims would have joined the fake campaign, but the term “adidas instagram” has seen a spike in Google searches in the past few hours and has tripled the average of previous days. Some people have reported similar cases with other patents, for example, the clothing store Zara and Nike, Adidas’s competitor in the sporting goods segment.
Searches for the terms «adidas instagram» tripled throughout the 20th – Photo: Reproduction / Nicolly Vimercate
Scams like this use the name of famous brands to attract victims, whether to click on dangerous links or to inflate the number of followers of a profile in order to sell it later. On social media, criminals have used the ad system a lot to advertise similar to famous brands.
This is the strategy that characterizes phishing, when the attack no longer involves great technological sophistication to launch social engineering tricks in order to deceive as many users as possible. The biggest blows of 2018 used, in large part, this expedient to spread on the network and reach 48 million Brazilians, according to a Kaspersky survey.
The main recommendation to avoid being a victim is to check the advertiser profile. When in doubt, it is important to do a manual search for the company name in the social network search tool to find out the name used in real profiles. Both on Instagram and Facebook, the official profiles have a verification stamp next to the name.
You should also be aware of spelling errors and emails with strange senders and flashy subjects.
Famous brands have profiles with verification stamp on social networks – Photo: Reproduction / Paulo Alves
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