Participation in the Drawing Scam - How to remove

“Participation in the drawing” is a phrase used by fake Instagram giveaways – scams. If you encounter this pop-up, it tells you that you’ve been selected to participate in a giveaway. If you continue with it, it eventually tells you that you won a prize worth thousands of dollars. However, the “Participation in the drawing” giveaway is fake and the prize does not exist.

The “Participation in the drawing” scam is meant to promote dishonest subscription services and reward sites. It could lead you to phishing scams and other potentially harmful pages.

About the Participation in the drawing scam:

Threat type	Scam.
Problems and dangers	The page promises a cash prize, it links to other scam webpages, those pages might ask for your personal and payment information.
How the “Participation in the drawing” scam spreads	It’s advertised online, it might be shown by an adware infection.
How to avoid being scammed by “Participation in the drawing”	Check your subscriptions and cancel those that you don’t want to be active, if needed, remove all adware and other malware with antivirus scanners (such as Spyhunter for PC, Combo Cleaner for Mac, etc.), block ads and malicious websites.

Is the scam dangerous?

“Participation in the drawing” is a giveaway scam that, when I encountered it, was made to look like an Instagram page.

It’s common for fake giveaways to use the logos and color schemes of known websites. For instance, Annual Visitor Survey pages usually use the Facebook color scheme, while the Google Rewards Center pages are made to look like Google’s pages. This way, these scams are able to trick more people.

And so, the “Participation in the drawing” pop-up pretends to be associated with Instagram because Instagram is a trusted website:

The raffle of prizes from the social network Instagram!

This isn’t the first time that Instagram is misused and abused by malicious actors to spread scams and trick people.

The good news is that the “Participation in the drawing” page is not dangerous. On its own, it’s just a deceptive page with some fake comments at the bottom. It won’t infect your device with malware.

The problem is what happens after you’re promised your cash prize. The “Participation in the drawing” page links you to another page to receive your (nonexistent) prize. What that other page is might vary:

• It could be a media subscription page, such as Geeker.com. These pages are dangerous because they let people believe they’re signing up to receive their prize. In reality, they sign up for a very expensive monthly subscription to a subpar media website.
• It might also be a reward site, like Flash Rewards. These sites promise their users chances to win gift cards and other prizes if the users continue to buy various small items.

Compared to other prize scams, “Participation in the drawing” is not the worst. And still, it can lead to very real problems. It’s important to be aware of the dangers of these giveaway scams.

What causes “Participation in the drawing” pop-ups?

Fake giveaways like “Participation in the drawing” tend to show up as ads on websites that allow malicious and low-quality advertisements. Torrenting sites, free movie sites, online video converters, and similar sites tend to display these ads.

Notification hijackers can also cause various malicious ads to appear on your screen. These websites work by getting access to your browser’s notification settings and then sending you ads as notification messages.

And finally, malicious ads and redirects can appear thanks to an adware infection, such as a malicious browser extension or application.

If you see “Participation in the drawing” and other iffy pop-ups only when you visit a specific website, then it might be that website that’s responsible for the pop-ups.

But if you see malicious ads and pop-ups everywhere you go online, then there is likely a malicious app or browser add-on injecting them.

How to avoid being scammed by “Participation in the drawing”

If you signed up with your personal information for a website hoping to get the prize that “Participation in the drawing” promised, then check your email inbox. If you signed up for anything, read the Terms of Service and check your bank account. Dispute unwanted charges and, if needed, ask your bank for help.

Use antivirus programs like Spyhunter for Windows, Combo Cleaner for macOS, and others to scan your device and check it for adware infections and other potentially unwanted software.

Review the notification settings of your web browsers and block unwanted websites from being able to send messages to you.

If a website that you regularly visit unexpectedly started showing ads for “Participation in the drawing”, you can try contacting the administrators and telling them what happened. They might not know that their site got infected with code that causes malicious redirects.

On the other hand, some sites always show malicious ads. You can’t stop them, but you can install an ad blocker. It should help you stay safe on sites that are too aggressive with their ads.

You can’t block the “Participation in the drawing” ads specifically. The version I saw was on Limitedprizes.net, a site that hosts a few other fake giveaways. But these scams never live on just one site – they have many small sites spreading them. The best that you can do is be careful and not trust any giveaways or prize draws that come from unknown companies.

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