Back to Africa Check

Beware fake ‘MTN’ promotions on Facebook

The Facebook page “MTN Awoof” claims South African mobile telecoms company MTN is compensating Africans for the recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

“In Order to compensate Africans for the XEN0PH0BlA att@chs by South Africans. We are giving out 100GB worth of Data,” one of its posts reads.

“All you have to do is type ‘MTN CARES’ then use the (SEND MESSAGE) button below and send us a message now.”  

Another promotion on the page reads: “ MTN is giving out 122GB data to Customers for free. All you have to do to qualify is type MTN AWOOF AND SEND US A MESSAGE.”

Yet another claims there are 15,000 Infinix S4 phones up for grabs. All users have to do is comment "INFINIX S4" without interruption, and they will apparently be contacted.

In all its promotions, the page asks users to contact it privately via inbox.



Clues page is a fraud


Although the page carries a logo that resembles the official MTN logo, there are clues that it doesn’t represent the telecoms company.

Its posts carelessly and inconsistently use capital and small letters, and often have numbers in place of letters. It is also unlikely that MTN would only want to contact customers via Facebook comments, and the social network’s inbox.

The page does not have basic contact details in its “about” section. It also doesn’t list the MTN website.

And its “promotions” don’t appear on the MTN website, or on its official Facebook page.

‘This is a scam’


Africa Check asked Xoliswa Mfene in MTN’s customer care department about the Facebook page.

“Kindly note that this is a scam as we are not aware of this initiative,” she told Africa Check.

Africa Check has previously debunked similar adverts posted by Facebook fraudsters pretending to represent legitimate companies. – Dancan Bwire





 

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.