It kills me when I see people fall for the scams across Facebook. It really does. I know that people are just hopeful – and they don’t mean to be gullible. But I get irritated, the same as everyone else, when I get 20 scam group invites in my requests page, and my newsfeed is covered with this brand new type of scam that’s going around.
Some “bright-bulb” in Scamsville thought to himself, “Hey, wouldn’t it be COOL if we could get people to POST our scam on their walls?? Wouldn’t that be awesome?!?!” And now this new scam is travelling as fast (if not faster) than the old invite-all-your-friends-or-else method. Luckily, it’s also easier to combat if you exercise a little diligence.
By the way, you can share this article with your friends by pressing this little blue button: [fb-share]
First, How to recognize the new scam:
Simply put, they look unprofessional. That’s the easiest indicator. Man, lucky for us these people care more about the scam and less about the attention to detail!
Here are a few examples of what I found on my newsfeed recently. All from my friends. 
Pay more attention to the warning signs, and not so much attention to the actual name of the scam. While they *are* scams to watch out for, I feel that it’s more important to be able to recognize the warning signs so you can judge any new ones appropriately.
Let’s pick this last one apart, shall we?
Now, who can resist the charm of this suave stud? And what incredible hair! Some people are unhappy that they missed out on the White Stallion, which is like a permanent wandering stallion when it comes to creating foals. So I don’t blame them for feeling that they have a second chance when they see things like this. But this picture is just a white stallion photoshopped to be black – the digital equivalent of painting the Queen of Heart’s white roses red. (It’s an Alice in Wonderland reference.)
I followed the “Farmville Secre � ” link to its corresponding fan page. Take a look at the pictures below IN ORDER (from left to right) to see what to expect. Selecting a picture will allow you to see it full-sized.
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How to combat these new scams
Great, you know how to protect yourself. But what if you wanted revenge? REVENGE!!! Well, let’s call it “protecting our friends, and their friends too”.
The new scam has a weakness that the old scams didn’t. On a phony fan page, the admin can turn off comments and remove the discussion boards so that no one can directly warn anyone else about it. But you are able to comment on any wall posts that your friends make. So all you have to do is comment, “This is a scam” or “Watch out, it’s a scam!” Something to that effect.
This has the dual-purpose of warning your friend of the dangers and ALSO warning your friend’s friends. Even if you friend gets wise in the end, he or she may forget to remove the wall post. Everyone will still see it. So your comment helps where your friend may not.
Finally, if you are a fan (or nowadays, a “like”) of one of these scam pages, you should remove yourself (“unlike”) and report the page to Facebook. Go back to the scam page itself. At the top is a tab called “Wall”. Select it and it will take you to the front page. On the left sidebar, towards the bottom, is “Unlike”. Select that, then select “Report Page” underneath it.Check out the picture on the right for a visual guide.
That’s it ~ I really hope this helps you out. Please feel free to share this article with your friends by pressing this blue button [fb-share] but only if it’s been valuable to you.
| Where to from here? | ||
 of The Facegamer fan page to show new posts on your newsfeed! |
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Umm you do know that the bonus pack was real, right? If you gave Farmville your email they sent a bonus pack link to you and when you accept it you can share it with your friends.
Because, it was send to your E-mail by zinga.
Very nice post
Thank you for sharing The Golden Goose – How to Give the New Scams “The Bird”
I posted a link to this to my Facebook as a favor to my friends. I will admit I fell for a few of these real early on before I learned to recognize them. (Fortunately nothing that cost me money or anything.)
thanks alot i fell for a few and what a hassel thanks again
i to fell for them , happy to have this article to show my friends THANKS !
i also fell for them, but stopped when they asked for my cell….duh-why do they need that? “SCAM” TY for being so helpful, your tips are great….I guess we just need to take the time to LOOK at all of the info right in front of our eyes…..thanks again….GREAT HELP!
i love this site
So basically your saying this is a scam too since gifts are from thefacegamer.com and not farmville.com
don’t be such a dolt!
the items from the scams do not exist
the items from face gamer are real – AMD – you can collect them –
AND – it doesn’t cost you anything – AND – you don’t need to spam all your friends
Did you have to be so insulting? It serves no purpose and only makes it easy for other players to ignore you when you go looking for friends.
WHAT DO I DO WITH MY UNCOMPLETED BOTANICAL GARDEN NOW?
SNAP… i wish i cud tell u, but if u find out, can u let me no pls….wot a pain huh!!!
I just trashed it and put it down as a stupid loss …..got my valuable space back, that made me happy
Since it was one of the limited time items, once the “promotion” time is over, links are closed, and the pieces are gone. The Botanical Garden is just one of numerous items that are cycled through during the year, and some are purely of aesthetic value. You receive no benefit from owning one, and they take up a lot of space. I chose, when it first came out, to avoid it completely. It never had a chance to take up valuable crop space. I much prefer to have a great deal of farming plots to work with, which actually DO benefit me, and others. And — I am one of the farmers who has never griped that there isn’t any room on my plantation for all the stuff FV puts out. Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you have to have it. Be choosy. You’ll be happier in the long run.
Store it until Zynga brings them back, which they will. Actually, you can store any of the buildings you have, not just the unfinished ones. I have the leaning tower, Rosetta Hall, Maison and the Adobe cottage in storge because I want to ue the land for farming right now. All you have to do is click on the building and either click “store this….” or drag the building to a storage shed. When you want to use the building just look inside any storage building and pull it out.
I prefer not to be so harshly critical about what other players want on their farms. It is, after all, their farm. If they want every building Zynga puts out, so what? That’s what’s so nice about the game. The player decides if he/she wants a building or not. All you have to do is just rotate the buildings you use. It’s a game, not a moral judgement.
“received” a secret cow from farmville? is this another scam?
very computer dumb..don’t know what u want with a URI..WHAT IS IT?
No est? seguro de que esto es verdad:), pero gracias a un cargo.
Gracias
Ilias
thanks 4 gifts.but when r u gonna make it easier 2 earn farm cash.??
Never noticed this stuff before. I only play one game and not interested in the rest. I didn’t scammed because of shear ignorance, just never “clicked” on them.
I have been stung i think, i did go fro some of these SCAMS, when i was naive, and now i just ignore them. But i seem to have done one by mistake, all the gifts i collect from posts and request page don’t seem to make it to their destination and it is getting really annoying. Have you got any advice on this please. Thanks , Simon.
There’s a rumor going around that if you like or use facegamer you’ll lose your FB account and all your apps … i find this site very helpful in many ways , please help me find out the truth !!!!!
Hi Jenny, I haven’t heard anything about it. Perhaps they were talking about Gamers Unite and their snag bar, which keeps getting mistakenly attributed to my site. It is not mine.
My first red flag I look for is if the page is meticulously designed to LOOK like a Facebook page, when it’s not… Or even if is still on the FB network, the links are all phony, the comments are manufactured and the “people” who left the comment take you back to that page’s wall.
Just thought I’d add to the “tell tale signs”
Do you know of a way to do undo the 66×66 scam? My sister’s farm will no longer load since she fell for the scan. She can gift, go to neighbors, but her own farm will not load. Any ideas on how to unload the 66×66 or a way to just start over again? Thanks.
Update: Can’t go to neighbors farms.
Do you know of a way to do undo the 66×66 scam? My sister’s farm will no longer load since she fell for the scan. She can gift but her own farm will not load. I assume because its an unrecognized size by FV. Any ideas on how to unload the 66×66 or a way to just start over again? Thanks.
Hi Lisa, the best thing your sister can do right now is contact Zynga’s technical support and see if they can fix it. You can fill out a service ticket by going to here:
http://zynga.custhelp.com/app/ask
Thanks for the post to share with everyone about this. Hopefully people will read it and learn from it : )
would like to have this for all the people out there
Thanks for the Great work on teaching us about scams, keep it up!
Thanks Again
I never understood how people can fall for facebook scams, especially now when the scams don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re scams. I really don’t understand it.
Now of course, I am suspicious of this site (you sound just too good to be true and that usually indicates spam), but I’ve been looking at your site for a few days now and I’m seeing that you’re not really making cheat codes, you’ve just figured out the exploits. I can accept exploits, I like to say it’s not really cheating, it’s playing the game smart, lol.
I’ll keep poking around, but you do seem legit.
I never understood how people can fall for facebook scams, especially now when the scams don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re scams. I really don’t understand it.
Now of course, I am suspicious of this site (you sound just too good to be true and that usually indicates spam), but I’ve been looking at your site for a few days now and I’m seeing that you’re not really making cheat codes, you’ve just figured out the exploits. I can accept exploits, I like to say it’s not really cheating, it’s playing the game smart, lol.
I’ll keep poking around, but you do seem legit. I think I’ll fall in love with this site in a few days.
Hi ALli,
The scams troll for new inexperienced gamers, and convince them to give out all their new friends’ names. They don’t know how to tell scams from the valid yet. So I try to help them, not insult them. I have half a dozen friends who still don’t get that NO ONE is giving away “500 FARM BUCKS” or “500 CAFE CASH!!!!!” Yes it had all those exclamation marks.
Now I can just share the goose with them.
so yeah…it didn’t take a few days. I’m in love.
Hi Allie, glad to hear it.
You should update the scams for everyone who DON”T GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are a lot of new ones going around. The rare pony is one of them..I try to keep up with all of them and post that are scams. I repost this article about every week . I still have friends falling for these stupid scams!!!!
ive been trying for months to get people to realize that if it does not say just “farmville” it is a scam
Thanks for the info. I usually check these out but put on my post that I am checking it out for my friends and that I will later post if it is a scam or not. And if I see that some one else has posted the same after I have found out it is a scam then I comment that it is a scam. I sure hope that I am helping some one out. I know that for a lot of them it is a monthly charge to a cell phone which is not something that I want to do or have anyone that I know have happen to them.
When they ask for your cell number, that is the biggest red flag. They then send you a “premium text” that costs at least $9.99 a month. The worst part is that even if you text back stop 30 seconds later to cancel whatever bs they’ve managed to talk you into, they still charge you for a month.
it does not work
I don’t remmber who posted face gamer tonight but I sure am glad I Stopped and Looked at the information you all are putting out there I haven’t been playing long THANK ALL OF YOU FOR THIS VALUBLE INFORMATION Donna
When you do see one of these scams, you can help kill it by reporting it!
Click the link, which will take you to the page, and then DO NOT click “Like” or “Yes”
or whatever it wants you to click… instead, click on the “Wall” tab, and at the lower
left hand side click on “Report Page”. That will open a pull down menu, and you can
choose whatever description is most appropriate (usually “spam”).
We got two of the scams removed within the last few days by working together
and reporting pages as a large group. When FB gets a lot of reports they check
into it (I posted this info and a direct link to the website’s wall so my friends could
all report them).
The most basic is if they ask you to “like” and invite all your friends..IT IS A SCAM. FB and FV strictly limit haw many invites you can send, usually around 6 – 10. Also the Black Stallion should be removed from your page here as he has come true…finally.
Thanks for all the info for the newbies, it can be tricky sometimes for them.
thanks
Thank you for the things you put on your site. I find most of it to be very useful, epecially the how to detect a “scam”!!!! I put your link for the scams on my profile for all of my friends to see! (especially the ppl who are new to facebook, or are younger kids-they don’t realize they are scams!) Thank you VERY much! =D
[...] The Golden Goose – How to Give the New Scams “The Bird” [...]
what about this FV ?? posting to get a 44×44 farm upgrade??
TIME FOR AN UPDATE TO THIS VERY USEFUL PAGE.
Hello there , just wondering how do I master THE FINAL EXAM: I have to finish royal cabinet & royal utensil holder. How do I do that???