This announcement of a Renfe pass for Easter is a scam

“The Spanish railway network Renfe offers everyone an annual pass for EUR1.95. Follow the link and buy the card!”. This is how an ad published on Facebook by at least a couple of recently created pages reads: ‘Cheap travel’ and ‘Discount for train travel’. Both have only been around since the end of March and are likely to have been created specifically for this campaign.

And why would Renfe advertise such a pass, which would practically sell itself, hiding its brand? Well simple: because it is false that such a fertilizer existsto. In fact, the same image of the ad speaks of “subscription” while showing a “gift card”… but this does not exist either.

In fact, yesterday the official Renfe profiles on Facebook and Twitter posted a screenshot of said announcement clarifying that the information was “false” and encouraging us not to “bite” in the scam. They completed their message with a recommendation never click on “a suspicious link”. Suspicious, for example, like the ad itself, which redirects to websites totally unrelated to Renfesuch as ‘xmoon.info’ or ‘jekna.info’.

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The raffle without a raffle for the season ticket or gift card or whatever. Summary: that you are not going on a train trip

The users who made the mistake of clicking on the link, accessed a website that replaces the appearance (logo, corporate color) of the original, although it congratulates us (that is supposed to mean the title ‘Congratulations!’) because we have been “randomly selected” to participate in a survey:

“It only takes a minute and you could win a prize: a Renfe gift card!

As passenger fares increase, the administration is offering a gift card for a year of free travel for only EUR1.95. Only 1000 lucky will be the winners and only for the residents of Spain”.

via Maldita.es Next, they will ask us three simple questions as a condition of reaching the prize.

At this point, however, We do not know if we are dealing with a contest, a mere promotion, if the card is free or if it costs almost 2 euros. But between the questions we just answered and the screen that leads us to when we answer them ‘correctly’ (in which we are ‘congratulated’ (sic) for verifying that we are real people and offering us the opportunity to choose a ‘box gift’)… …it is clear that We are facing the same type of scam that we already addressed a few days ago linked to the fake gift cards of the fashion brand Shein and, before that, with the drawing of a Leroy Merlin drill for Father’s Day.

Once we have selected the ‘correct’ box (by chance, we will always get it right) we are redirected to another website, within the ‘renfe.jlzte.com’ subdomain. There They will ask us for our personal information and that we pay the EUR1.95 (theoretically as ‘shipping charges’, although they never actually use such words) using our credit card.

via Maldita.es This step is theoretically necessary to be able to receive the card at our address, butIn reality, the ‘legal notice’ on the website indicates that we are actually signing up for a subscription service It has nothing to do with traveling by train.

Said subscription service will begin to periodically charge variable amounts of money in our account. Remember: never participate in one of these ‘promotions’ if it is not done directly on the official website of the company that supposedly covers them, or if it is not advertised from their official social profiles. Photos | Renfe, Maldita.es

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