FAKE ALERT: Anything From The InTur Travel Agency Slippers, Cosmetic Bag, Travel Pillow, Pen & Other Offers

Update: This is part of a “WebSEO” fake freebie network powered by another freebie site that has Russian ties. More info here.

I saw this InTur Travel Agency offer on a few other freebies sites and instead of waiting until my next sample news update post, I felt I needed to address this as highly likely to be fake as soon as possible.

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Here is the URL if you want to follow along, however I urge you not to share your information with this website: http://www.intur.su/free-sample/, http://www.intur.su/free-ballpoint-pen-for-travel/ and http://www.intur.su/free-travel-cosmetic-bag/

Let’s dig into why this is likely to be a fake

1. Their site is based out of Moscow, Russia from an apartment building on Google Maps. If you think they will ship to the US for cheap, you are wrong, so it might be valid but it’s not going to make sense for any business due to the high shipping costs.
2. Why are they offering 3 free items instead of one? Why is there no business goal attached to them, it’s just a freebie without any way to drive business back to them beyond maybe some exposure to their brand name. When you get a sample, it usually has a coupon so you’d try the full-size afterwards, right? Doesn’t look like that in this case.
3. If you click around, the rest of the site isn’t in English at all, it’s entirely in Russian, why are the ‘free pages’ in English? This could be a sign the page is hacked.
4. You can pretty much enter anything you want in the form, not a sign it’s fully fake, but not a good sign it’s serious either.
5. The website ends in .su – this means it’s from the Soviet Union in the 1980’s – all .su websites were almost entirely taken off the internet due to the Soviet Union no longer existing. If it was hosted as a credible website in Russia, it would be ending with .ru and not .su. Here is a quote from the .su Wikipedia page to give a little more context: “The domain has been reported to host many cybercrime activities due to the lax, outdated terms of use, and staying out of focus (2% usage comparing to the primary .ru zone)[12][13] Rules for timely suspension of malicious domains[13] have been in place since 2013.[14]”. Enough said?

There are a lot of bad smells on this website, I’d entirely avoid this. While I can never know for 100% absolute certainly a freebie is fake, this one just doesn’t feel right at all and I didn’t even share valid personal information when testing it out because I feel such a lack of trust towards it. If you signed up for this one, worst case is you’ll get some spam mail, spam email and perhaps some sketchy links from fake PayPal/Amazon/other websites. Don’t trust links that ask for your password or any personal information, ever. Thank you for reading my fake freebie rant.

-John ‘Samples’ Clark