Facebook has been in the news a lot lately for not doing enough to stop misinformation. Today I want to described one specific type of post that continues to show up from time to time and people are still falling for it. Let’s look at one I spotted recently and I’ll point out the many red flags it contains. Please note that Texas Roadhouse is also a victim of this scam.

The very first thing anyone should notice is an offer that sounds too good to be true. Can any restaurant stay in business if they offer four meals including drinks for free to anyone who shares a post? C’mon now, that should scream SCAM to you. Sure, a free meal sounds good, but that doesn’t make it real.

Now let’s look more closely at the post itself. The post claims it is from “Texas Roadhouse’s”. Is that the real page name of the corporate Facebook page? I’ll explore that more after we finish with the post. Then the CEO has a middle initial of J but the period is before the initial. Big corporations have teams to do their social media and a post like this would go through a lot of editing before it was posted. This type of mistake would never happen. The last part was the scam kicker to me. They included a URL that you had to visit after sharing the scam. It was not secure page as it starts with http. I’ve blurred out some of the URL but I can tell you that isn’t the corporate Web site. In fact, that site has one purpose and one purpose only: to steal your information!

If you still want to believe the post is legit, you can actually go to the Facebook page that posted it. I’ve included a screenshot of the page below and I’ll go through some of the many red flags I spotted.

Again, the name of the page is “Texas Roadhouse’s” which is not the name of the restaurant chain. The handle is “@TexasRoadHousesFan” which again doesn’t match the corporate chain’s handle. I don’t think anyone, including the real restaurants, would refer to the chain as a “Health Food Restaurant.”

Let’s now go down the left column. It asks if “http://Imafakepage.com/” is the right website for the page. C’mon now, they flatly admit it a fake page if they have that for their website!!! Go down a little farther and it says the page was created on October 13, 2021 and yet the post claims you have to respond by October 14th at 10:00pm to get a voucher. I’ve reported this page to Facebook myself and I’m sure I’m not the only one. So by the time you read this, the fake page probably will be long gone.

I’ve seen the same basic scam with other restaurants, airline tickets, gift cards and much more. Before you share something because you want the “freebie,” do at least a little research. I’ve yet to see one with a bunch of red flags that make it obvious that it is a scam!