Trick or treat: How to tell a genuine Nokia giveaway from a scandalous scam
We at Nokia Conversations like to think we have an optimistic outlook on life, but these messages tend to be too good to be true. But what if they appear come from someone we really trusted? Like, say, Nokia? To deal with this dilemma, we spoke to Wayne Spillet a.k.a. Captain Care, Community Manager from Nokia Support Discussions. Here’s his advice on how to tell a genuine Nokia giveaway from a scandalous scam.
We’ve just received an SMS or email from Nokia saying we’ve won a massive cash prize. How do we know whether we’ve been picked out by Lady Luck or an unscrupulous scammer?
Sorry to disappoint, but these are all scams run by criminal gangs. Their aim is to use the good name of Nokia to trick you into parting with your hard-earned money in “processing fees” for prizes that you will never receive. Nokia is only one of a number of globally well-known companies whose names are used in these scams. Nokia will never contact you out-of-the-blue to tell you that you have won a large sum of money.
What should we do to the message, then?
The best advice I can give you is to ignore and delete it. If you reply to any mails or text messages, you are simply confirming to the criminals that they have a genuine address or number and they will surely continue to bombard you with junk messages.
We just saw a tempting offer on Facebook, telling us to like and share it to win a Nokia Lumia 1020. And we really, really want that phone…
Fake pages appear on Facebook from time to time saying that you can win one of the latest smartphones, tablets, computers, etc. simply by sharing and liking the page. Genuine Nokia Competitions will NEVER be managed from separate pages on Facebook, you will ONLY find them on our genuine Nokia Facebook pages. Did you know that it’s even against Facebook rules to make entering competition conditional on liking or sharing?
So, how can we find out about genuine promotions and competitions from Nokia?
Nokia gives out prizes in lots of genuine events. To make sure you know about them:
- Check regularly at lumiaconversations.microsoft.com for the latest news, offers and competitions;
- Like our Facebook page and have the latest news from Nokia delivered direct to your timeline;
- Follow us on Twitter.
How do I know I have found a real Nokia Facebook page?
There are often pages set up by others which are designed to look like real Nokia pages and claim to offer information about Nokia products, often using images that have been copied from our genuine Facebook pages or web sites to add credibility. Nokia has one global Facebook page and many operated by Nokia’s local Sales units in individual countries. All our Facebook activities and genuine information will be on our official pages and we never create additional pages for individual phone models. We do, however, have a page for our popular Nokia Music service.
Nokia is currently going through Facebook’s “verified page” programme and soon all of our official Facebook pages will appear with the verified “tick” symbol.
A big thanks to Captain Care for saving us from the scammers! Have you had any experiences of dubious messages and giveaways? If so, we’d love to hear about them in the comments section. And don’t forget to try your luck in the genuine Nokia competitions, you’ve got to be in it to win it!