A Facebook (FB) page pretending to be an official channel of Toyota Motors is tricking netizens, including Filpinos, into a promo giveaway of Hiluxes and Fortuners. This is fake.
“The promotion or raffle posted in Facebook is in no way associated with Toyota. We urge our customers to be on high alert and not to fall prey to these scams that are on the rise,” Andro Lira, a member of Toyota Motor Philippines’ Customer Relations Department, told VERA Files Fact Check via email.
“All [of Toyota’s] official promotions are posted through our official website and official social media pages only,” Lira added.
“So far no one has given a number other than 43, there are no winners for the Toyota Hilux and Toyota Portuner Legend 2023. There are still 4 more wins [sic],” the Feb. 5 post by FB page Toyota Hilux ,Club read.
Hoping to win the giveaway, several netizens commented that they saw four or five number 48s in the image attached to the bogus post. The impostor FB page then sent a comment to every netizen, asking them to click the blue “Sign in” button in their page that leads into a Google Site.
The Google Site asked netizens to claim their prize by completing a survey in another Blogspot website (tatangsolar12.blogspot.com), which redirects to a loop of multiple advertisements.
Toyota Hilux ,Club’s bogus post got a total of 13.44 million interactions. It appeared six days after Toyota was called the world’s top-selling automaker in 2022.
FB’s Page Transparency section reveals that the impostor FB page was created on Aug. 1, 2022 and is managed by two people from Indonesia.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)