Who wouldn’t love free flight tickets for vacationing abroad? Well, a website in the name of Emirates Airlines has been offering free two-way tickets to Europe and Asia.
But before you get too excited: it’s just another phishing scam!
Phishing scams use deception to trick people into divulging sensitive data. Often, they are used for data mining. But sometimes, they are also used for financial fraud.
The link to this website is being widely shared on Facebook and WhatsApp.
How does the scam work?
We tried to open this website on a desktop computer but failed. Ultimately, we realised that it has been created in such a way that it only opens on a phone.
Once you access the website, it asks you to take a short quiz to avail the aforementioned free flight tickets. As you answer the questions, you will be redirected to a new page with gift boxes. Upon selecting these boxes, you’ll be informed that you’ve won two round-trip flight tickets to Europe or Asia.
Next, you are asked to share the website link with either 30 friends or five (WhatsApp) groups. This is standard in phishing scams. As you do this and click on the “Finish” button, you will be redirected to another web page with the warning: “This page has been reported unsafe.”
Multiple red flags
The website: There are various red flags on this website which indicate that this is not the official website of Emirates Airlines. The search box, the dropdown menu, and the user profiles listed under the “Customer Reviews” section — none of them are clickable.
The URL: The website’s link “tinyurl5.ru/r284629707/” resembles a shortened URL made using tinyurl.com. This appears to have been done to bluff people and make them believe that this is a genuine website whose link has just been shortened.
When you share this URL on mobile WhatsApp, the preview mentions “fly.emirates.com”. This is quite identical to the actual preview you’d see for the Emirates Airlines website emirates.com.
This is what the original Emirates Airlines looks like.
Newly-made: Using the GoDaddy WhoIs tool, we found that this website was created on April 6, 2022. Such websites are generally created to run temporary scams and deleted as and when this is done — or if it gets reported.
Experts say this is ‘Typical’.
AFWA spoke to cybersecurity expert Bob Diachenko, who examined it and called it a typical phishing website. He added that about 15 security vendors had already flagged it as malicious.
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ClaimEmirates airlines is giving away two-way flight tickets for a vacation in Europe and Asia. ConclusionThis is a phishing scam. Emirates Airlines confirmed it is not running any such contest, adding this website has no link to it.
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The number of crows determines the intensity of the lie.
- 1 Crow: Half True
- 2 Crows: Mostly lies
- 3 Crows: Absolutely false