HOAX: This website offering free 50GB data to celebrate WhatsApp’s 10th anniversary is a scam

The website is fake since WhatsApp’s 10th anniversary was celebrated in 2019

Writer: PesaCheck

This website submitted for fact-checking via PesaCheck’s WhatsApp Tipline, supposedly offering WhatsApp users 50GB of data as part of the company’s 10th anniversary, is a HOAX.

To get the purported data, participants are required to provide their phone numbers and share the link with 12 friends or in WhatsApp groups.

The website has several red flags, among them a suspicious URL, a request for personal details (phone number), and the requirement for users to share the link before receiving data. The red flags prompted us to investigate the website.

Despite PesaCheck following all the steps outlined in the alleged promotion, we did not receive the promised free data. In the final stage, the verification tab was unresponsive and repeatedly redirected us to unrelated web pages.

Additionally, we performed a Whois search and established that the website was registered on 29 January 2023, while the authentic WhatsApp website, Whatsapp.com, was registered in September 2008.

Legitimate sites are usually older than hoax sites. Bogus sites also tend to have concealed registrant details.

The website claims that the free data is in celebration of WhatsApp’s 10th anniversary. However, the instant messaging application was founded in 2009 and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2019.

On WhatsApp’s verified Twitter account and Facebook page, there’s no information on any such promotion.

PesaCheck examined a website submitted for fact-checking via PesaCheck’s WhatsApp Tipline, supposedly offering WhatsApp users 50GB of data as part of the company’s 10th anniversary celebration and found it to be a HOAX.

This fact check was published by 211 Check with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and the African Fact-Checking Alliance.

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