False posts about 'electric bike giveaway' circulate in Indonesia after fuel price hike
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on October 4, 2022 at 06:22
- 4 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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The photos showing rows of electric bicycles were shared here on September 5, 2022 by a Facebook account purportedly belonging to a bike shop chain called Dunia Sepeda (World of Bikes).
It has been shared more than 1,600 times.
"With fuel prices continuing to rise, we are happy to announce that we will be donating 670 electric bikes for free," reads the post's Indonesian-language caption.
"These are the ones that we cannot sell anymore because of minor scratches and damages. All bikes can still work well. So, we will send them randomly to people who successfully write their favorite colour, for example 'RED'."
Similar claims circulated in Facebook posts here, here and here, with more than 2,000 shares in total.
Some of the posts shared pictures of different people standing next to electric bikes, as shown below:
All the posts were uploaded on different Facebook accounts called "Dunia Sepeda" days after the Indonesian government increased fuel prices on September 3, 2022.
However, the claim about the electric bike giveaway is false.
A keyword search found that Dunia Sepeda is a bicycle shop chain with three branches in Indonesia's Central Java province: two in Sukoharjo regency and one in the city of Solo.
AFP found no evidence that the purported giveaway was advertised on the chain's Facebook page or Instagram account.
When contacted by AFP, Dunia Sepeda confirmed that the electric bicycle giveaway claim was false, adding that it had advised customers to ignore the posts.
"We’ve never offered free bikes or an electric bike giveaway so [the posts] are definitely hoaxes," said Novi, a representative at Dunia Sepeda, told AFP. "Please ignore it. We told [customers] that [the posts] are not from us and they must never give their personal information to those scams on Facebook."
Photos used without permission
All the Facebook pages that shared the false claims used a photo of an electric bike superimposed with Dunia Sepeda's logo for their cover photo.
AFP found that the photo was taken from Dunia Sepeda's post on shopping platform Blibli.com.
It offers new Goda 145 Golden Falcon electric bikes for almost 5.5 million rupiah ($360) each.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the cover photo used by the fake Facebook page (left) and the photo in Dunia Sepeda's genuine post on Blibli.com (right):
The four photos of people with electric bicycles were taken from a Facebook page called Asia Motor / Sorumku, a bike shop in Sumenep, a city on Indonesia's Madura island.
The photos -- posted between late December 2021 and late January 2021 here, here, here and here -- were all captioned: "Thank you for trusting us. The purchase of a Butterfly electric bicycle."
Below are screenshot comparisons of the photos in the misleading post (left) and the genuine photos from Asia Motor / Sorumku (right):
Asia Motor / Sorumku told AFP that they have never had an electric bike giveaway, and other Facebook accounts were using their pictures without permission.
"Please be careful, there are a lot of scams out there," the store's representative warned.
Facebook pages impersonating companies in order to promote scams typically ask users to share and comment on posts, or even demand them to share their personal details.
AFP has previously debunked scams offering KFC coupon giveaways, free doughnuts, cash handouts, gasoline gift cards and free internet data.
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