IN SHORT: While Spar in South Africa has a rewards programme that sometimes offers prizes to customers, suspicious links circulating on Facebook and WhatsApp have nothing to do with the supermarket chain. They are part of a surprisingly complex network of scam websites.
The South African branch of the supermarket chain Spar has a customer rewards programme called Spar Rewards. But Facebook posts advertising “cash prizes” to Spar customers who complete a simple survey are too good to be true.
The posts, which have been widely shared on Facebook, include a link to a web page titled “Spar Rewards - Win upto 1Million”. The link has also been circulating on WhatsApp and forwarded to Africa Check for verification.
But there’s no evidence that this is official Spar marketing. In fact, it’s part of a much more extensive network of fake sites.
Beware of deceptive links
At first glance, the posts may appear to contain a genuine Spar promotion. Link previews, which can be automatically generated when sharing a link on platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook, include the Spar logo and other branding.
The link even includes “spar.co.za”, the genuine domain name of the official Spar South Africa website. However, even though it includes this text, the link ends with and directs users to the domain “prsu.xyz”.
WhoIs tools, like the site whois.com, can reveal more information about a domain. At the time of writing, they indicated that the “prsu.xyz” domain was first registered in late July 2024. It is managed anonymously through the US-based hosting service GoDaddy. By contrast, spar.co.za has been registered since June 1996 through the South African hosting service FirstNet. It is registered under the name of a long-time Spar employee.
The official Spar website has a dedicated page explaining how to join and claim discounts through its rewards programme. It does not mention or link to the “psru.xyz” site and does not promise rewards for customers who complete related surveys.
Spar does conduct giveaways through the rewards programme, but these are always linked to the official Spar website, as seen in the examples advertised on the verified Spar Facebook page.
All of this is enough reason not to trust these links circulating on social media. But Africa Check dug a little deeper and confirmed that these links were part of a surprisingly complex money making scheme using digital advertising programmes.
Complex scheme connected to a network of other fake pages
At the time of writing, the “psru.xyz” page did nothing except redirect to a blog page hosted on the free service Blogger. (Note: This could change in future, and we have deliberately not linked to this page for this reason. Be very careful when visiting untrustworthy links.)
This blog checks whether visitors are using a mobile device before showing them a page that mimics an official Spar giveaway page.
Visitors who are not using a mobile browser are simply redirected to google.com. This may be because the fake Spar page has only been designed to be convincing on a mobile browser.
The fake giveaway page makes great efforts to convince visitors that they have won a prize from Spar. Visitors are asked to complete a survey, although the answers they provide don’t influence whether they reach the next stage. Then they are asked to choose a “prize” by clicking on images of presents. Eventually, they are told: “Your prize is: 9000 Rand, Follow the instructions on below to claim your prize!”
The instructions are to share the original “psru.xyz” link via WhatsApp. However, no matter how many times a visitor shares the link, there’s no prize for them to claim. But the site also doesn’t ask for sensitive details like personal information or banking details. So what’s the scam here?
The answer is that this site is making money from advertising. It attempts to open new browser tabs to sponsored sites throughout this process, earning money through advertising programmes like Google’s AdSense and digital advertising network ylliX.
These networks require each ad to identify the owner of the page on which it appears, so that when a visitor clicks on an ad, the right person is paid. The fake Spar page includes an identity connecting it to the Google AdSense programme.
Africa Check found the same ID on web pages imitating other major brands, including Woolworths, KFC and Ikea. All of the pages were controlled by the same Blogger profiles.
It is clear that this fake Spar giveaway is a money-making scheme that relies on trying to convince as many people as possible to spend time driving attention to adverts hosted on fake pages.
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