Fraudulent Facebook Advertising

[Ann White]

Over the weekend I received an email from a student telling me that she saw a Facebook ad with our school’s name and logo, offering a $10,000 scholarship. She sent me the link and expressed concern that it was shady and thought I’d like to know.

I changed my Facebook demographic information to try and see the ad (assuming that it was targeted at current students), and it worked. Here is the picture:

And here is the link it goes to:

http://www.scholarshipzone.com/form.php?c=189975043&forcelp=

I had our Vice President for Admissions look at “Scholarship Zone” and she confirmed that we are not at all affiliated and had her doubts of its validity.

Seeing as how I doubt our 2000 student campus is the bulk of their income, my guess is that they’re doing this on a large scale, a la the Class of 2013 issue from December.

I have filed a complaint to the Intellectual Property Infringement service at Facebook and am waiting on a response.

But, I have no way to know, so that’s where the super-networked Highered community comes in.

Does anyone know anything about Scholarship Zone? Are they using your school’s logo to advertise on Facebook?

[Michael J. Powers]

We just did the same, and included a link to our actual listing of scholarships.

[Hilary Knox]

Thanks for all the info. and suggestions everyone. Here is another one:

It links to http://www.25kscholarship.com/2/State-University-of-New-York-at-Alb...
which is registered to WhoisGuard in CA

[Michael J. Powers]

Heard back from Facebook today. They wanted a screenshot of the whole page, not just the ad, so I've sent the work studies back into Facebook to look for the ad again. (Not a stretch, since half of them were looking at Facebook already.;-) )