Many of our citizens were lured by fake Instagram pages, promising attractive gifts on Republic Day. These fake pages made announcements that Paytm was crediting INR 4,000 to its customers, for every mention on Instagram. Announcements were made that Amazon was offering INR 9,000 gift vouchers to its new followers and Myntra was offering Rs 3,999 for sharing its pages.

Many people who followed these instructions were waiting for their gift codes on the morning of the Republic Day, but nothing arrived. They had fallen prey to a social media scam of fake pages.

Many users complained against the e-commerce companies for their lack of response, but they were unaware that these pages were run by fraudsters and the companies had no links to these pages.

The main intention of running these fake pages was to increase followers. Once the pages reached 10,000 likes, the handle name would be changed and the account sold. Fake pages were usually named after popular e-commerce companies like Amazon Voucher, Flipkart Official, Paytm offers and so on.

The fake pages even uploaded screenshots of customers who appeared to have previously received the gift cards. This was done to convince users to follow their pages.

You should be careful about these fake pages and not fall for them. So, whenever e-commerce companies run contests on Instagram to engage their users, make sure you follow only verified social handles.

To stop such fraudulent activities, social media sites do not allow users to change the username and URL of the account.  Facebook faced the same problem, but now this has reduced due to restrictions imposed. Instagram has yet to implement a solution to this problem.

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