Free Air France tickets for Black Friday? The offer was too good to be true. The airline alerted this Monday, November 7 to this scam due to a “fraudulent site” which invites Internet users to “participate in a fake contest”. “Dear customers, many of you have reported to us a fraudulent site inviting you to participate in a fake fake contest on various platforms, including WhatsApp. Air France is not behind it and invites you to be vigilant” , the airline wrote on Twitter.

“Hi. It’s Black Friday for Air France gifts! Hurry, the window of opportunity is closing. Take our quiz, find the hidden prize and win up to 2 return tickets to Europe” , write in particular the crooks in messages broadcast in particular on the WhatsApp application. The site promises you to win 5,000 return tickets for Europe. As Le Parisien details, if the scam is starting to go viral, it is because the fraudulent site encourages potential victims to answer a quiz and share this fake contest link with 20 contacts.

Indeed, in practice, it is first necessary to answer several questions such as “Do you know Air France?”. The potential victims of this fake contest must then choose a gift box to try to win the Air France plane tickets promised by the fraudulent site. We give it to you in a thousand, all Internet users are winners and a new web page opens with confetti to announce to the participant that he has won his two round-trip plane tickets for a trip to Europe.

This is when the trap closes on the victims since to recover their fake plane tickets obtained for Black Friday, the winners must necessarily share this exceptional promotion with 5 groups or 20 friends with the link of the scam. The winner of the competition lights must also enter his address and personal data, including his bank details, on another website which is not the official website of the airline. Air France therefore encourages Internet users to be extremely vigilant.

“I received the same thing this morning from several contacts. Indeed a scam, not to be shared!”, testifies in particular a victim of this phishing on the specialized site Signal-Arnaques an Internet user. BFMTV recalls that this is not the first time that Air France has been the victim of identity theft. “In 2018, hackers had bought several domain names resembling that of the official Air France website”, specifies the news site. At the time, fraudulent sites were also using SMS with the same fake contest scam, mostly through the WhatsApp app. Taking advantage of the company’s 85th anniversary, the scammers were sending text messages that also offered counterfeit tickets for free or 1 euro. This time it is Black Friday that serves as a bait for potential victims.