'Total Wipeout Tour' promoted on Facebook tricks thousands in apparent scam

The whole 'tour' may have been a hoax designed to get people to hand over their personal information

Doug Bolton
Tuesday 08 March 2016 14:52 GMT
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A contestant takes on Total Wipeout's famous Big Red Balls
A contestant takes on Total Wipeout's famous Big Red Balls

Thousands of people who signed up to take part in a 'Total Wipeout Tour' may have been made victims of a scam.

The so-called 'tour' was publicised heavily on Facebook, and promised to bring the obstacle course from popular BBC gameshow Total Wipeout to various locations across the UK.

Dozens of Facebook event pages for major cities and towns around the country were created and thousands of people signed up, despite the pages containing very few actual details about the events.

The Facebook events promised people the chance to try out the Total Wipeout obstacle course

Most of the events and the tour's main page have now been deleted, and it appears that the whole thing was little more than a scam.

In order to register for the events, Facebook users were encouraged to enter personal details like their date of birth and email address in an online form.

It's thought that the 'tour' could have been a simple data collection exercise, designed to trick people into handing over personal information which could then be sold on to spammers or scam artists.

Others suggested that it was an attempt to 'game' Facebook, with the organisers of the online campaign trying to build up the number of 'likes' on their page so they could sell it.

Whatever the reason for the unusual campaign, the majority of the pages appear to have been removed, and it's unlikely that any kind of Total Wipeout Tour will be making its way around the UK this summer.

Tricks, scams and hoaxes are fairly common on Facebook, but it's rare for users to actually be asked to enter their personal information into a separate website.

Security experts who monitor these kinds of schemes all offer the same advice - if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

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