“Donation Of Free Water Tanks From Mtn” is a very confused scam Facebook page – but still a scam.
It describes itself as an “energy company”, but MTN is a mobile telecoms company. Its profile pic and cover photo show large water tanks, but the scam seems only to offer “free” gas cylinders from Total Uganda – for a fee.
Posts on the page link to freedonations.net, a WordPress blog with the title “Free Gas Cylinders From Total Uganda”.
To apply for a gas cylinder, people are required to pay a “delivery fee” of USh7,000 for a 6 kilogram cylinder and USh8,000 for a 13 kilogram cylinder.
This is how the scammers make their money.
Total Uganda and Total Kenya have both warned of this kind of scam, advising the public to visit their official social media sites for any official communications instead.
And Africa Check has exposed scams offering free gas cylinders – and free water tanks – many times. To find out more, read our guide to Facebook scams and how to spot them. – Dancan Bwire
It describes itself as an “energy company”, but MTN is a mobile telecoms company. Its profile pic and cover photo show large water tanks, but the scam seems only to offer “free” gas cylinders from Total Uganda – for a fee.
Posts on the page link to freedonations.net, a WordPress blog with the title “Free Gas Cylinders From Total Uganda”.
To apply for a gas cylinder, people are required to pay a “delivery fee” of USh7,000 for a 6 kilogram cylinder and USh8,000 for a 13 kilogram cylinder.
This is how the scammers make their money.
How to spot a scam
Total Uganda and Total Kenya have both warned of this kind of scam, advising the public to visit their official social media sites for any official communications instead.
And Africa Check has exposed scams offering free gas cylinders – and free water tanks – many times. To find out more, read our guide to Facebook scams and how to spot them. – Dancan Bwire
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 guideAfrica 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.
Further Reading
[email protected]: The challenges of working across Africa
Misinformation knows no borders and Africa Check often responds to similar false claims from country to country.
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