Claim: To celebrate its birthday, Tim Hortons chain of donut shops is giving away free gift cards.
FALSE
Examples:
[Collected via e-mail, December 2011]
Free $100 Tim Hortons Gift Card (limited time only)
Tim Hortons is currently giving away $100.00 gift cards to all facebook users!!
[URL elided]
[Collected via e-mail, October 2011 ]
Free $25 Tim Horton's Gift card
[URL elided]
To celebrate our birthday, we are giving away thousands of
[Collected via e-mail, October 2011 ]
FREE $25 Tim Hortons Gift Card
[URL elided]
To celebrate our birthday, we are giving away thousands of
Origins: In mid-October 2011, a survey scam purporting to offer free
Those who followed such instructions were then led into a series of surveys they were instructed to complete before their gift cards could be sent to them. As always with such cons, there were no gift cards to be had.
The "Tim Hortons $25 gift card" con appears to be a clone of the early-October 2011 survey scam falsely offering free Apple iPods, iPhones, or MacBooks in memory of Steve Jobs.
Tim Hortons was founded in 1964, which makes it
In December 2011, the "free Tim Hortons gift cards" scam reappeared with the amount of the promised giveaway increased to $100. In that iteration of the fraud, hopeful users led to web pages where they were instructed to click what purported to be "Share" and "Like" links. (Embedded countdown counters helpfully showing rapidly reducing numbers of gift cards to be had.)
Tim Hortons has issued a denial of the supposed giveaway:
A note of caution regarding an alleged
Barbara "tim bit(es) back" Mikkelson
Last updated: 5 December 2011