Here’s another small time phishing scheme that makes use of Facebook.
A new page has been put up to front as Philippine Airlines’ promo page. The fake PAL site offers a discounted fare of P99 on all destinations nationwide. While there are some promotional fares that can go as low as this offer, netizens need to be wary of those pages that are just pretending to be affiliated with legit brands.
For instance, this PAL promo page doesn’t even carry the official domain of the carrier. PAL’s official website is simply philippineairlines.com. This fake one is way different from the official site.
Also, the fake promo page asks would-be victims to do certain steps before they could avail of the promo code.
First, victims need to like a certain page. When we’re testing this out, we we’re redirected to like the page of ‘Flight Promo’. When you actually check that page, it’s completely not related to Philippine Airlines.
Second, users will have to share this promo to their Facebook accounts and tag 20 of your friends. This is just pure spamming, right?
The third step confirms that what the people behind this site like is to spam other users and victimize more people. The culprit wants users to share this fake promo to 15 more of their friends via Facebook Messenger.
Afterwards, users can now enter the promo code which is also indicated in the fake site. However, upon doing so, users will only be redirected to more suspicious pages that would either ask you to download something or enter personal details.
This type of online threat is very common in social media platforms specially in Facebook where users don’t verify their sources before sharing it on their own accounts.
For users that fall victim to this trick, they should immediately update their Facebook passwords to avoid any possible hacking or further spread of this page and the threats that may come using it.
Sophos already blocks the associated threat on this fake page as Mal/FBScam-A.
It would really help if you have an updated antivirus program as it will be your first line of defense against these threats.
PAL, on their part, released an official statement against the said fake promo:
Please be advised that the Php99 promo circulating online from thelatest.cf website is not an official PAL promotion pic.twitter.com/eZPB92TSud
— Philippine Airlines (@flyPAL) June 9, 2016
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