The Costco coupon showing up in your social media feed is too good to be true.
“While we love our fans and our members, this offer is a SCAM, and in no way affiliated with Costco,” the company said.
You have to click on a link to get the fake coupon, And then you have to share it on Facebook with some personal info.
As a general rule, if you have to share any personal information to get any so-called special offer, it probably isn’t real.
Other schemes send you to a site full of viruses, or to a fake survey site where scammers collect data to steal your identity. Others straight out ask for credit card or other financial information in order to access the deal.
Printed coupons used to only come in the mail or in the newspaper, which allowed manufacturers to print special security codes or other anti-fraud devices. But now scammers hijack and copy everything in the internet era.
There was a fake Doritos coupon that circulated recently, grocery stores honored it and lost a lot of money.
For more information on these and other types of coupon scams, go to FTC Facts for Consumers.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/scam-alerts
You can also check https://scambusters.org/fakecoupons.html