India Rewards Free Shopping Vouchers Scam

Story:

India Rewards:

Free shopping vouchers worth Rs 50,000.

Analysis:

The website India Rewards (india-rewards.com) promoted through emails and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter claims to offer free shopping vouchers worth Rs 50,000 to users. Let us analyze whether the India Rewards contest is a fact or scam.

India Rewards Contest

India Rewards website claims to offer free shopping vouchers worth Rs 50,000, providing users to choose between Big Bazaar, Reliance Mart or Flipkart vouchers. To participate in the contest, participants are required to register at the website by providing various personal and secured information like name, date of birth, mailing and email addresses, telephone number and personal interests. Once the participant provides his information, he is presented with a questionnaire (surveys) and promotional offers from third party advertisers, before completing the so called contest registration. If the visitor to the India Rewards website is not interested in the contest, there’s a link denoted as “No thanks, close this offer,” which when clicked, the user is again taken to other third party advertisement campaigns.

Screenshot of India Rewards Website Voucher

Planet49 Asia Pacific

On the bottom of the India Rewards website it is written that “Planet49 Asia Pacific guarantees that this competition is carried out“. However, it is to be noted that Planet49 Asia Pacific is not the same company as the ‘Planet 49 Asia Pacific Pte’ headquartered in Singapore. In May 2014, Planet 49 Asia Pacific Pte subsidiary eGentic, which is a Database marketing company, reported about similar such email scams luring people with the chance to win vouchers worth $1000.

From India Rewards Terms and Conditions

In their own terms and conditions, India Rewards states that:

Planet49 reserves the right to cancel or terminate the Contest at any time without any prior notice given to the participants and without the need to assign any reason whatsoever for such cancellation or termination subject to any direction from the regulatory authority.

And from their privacy policy:

Please note that we may transfer, sell or assign the collected information to any entity to which we divest all or a portion of our business, or to such of our clients as we deem appropriate.

They also mention that participants reveal their personal information at their own risk. Moreover, on the India Rewards website, over multiple sessions through many days, we have seen the same message that – only three vouchers are left. All this concludes that the India Rewards website with contest to give free shopping vouchers of worth Rs 50,000 is a scam designed to collect user information. Note that such scammers can also use other country specific domain names to lure users with (false) contests and vouchers. So like we always say, be careful where you are sharing your personal information.