Selling lost luggage for 16 NOK may sound too good to be true.
We can confirm that it is him.
Now Avinor is warning about fake Facebook accounts stealing its brand and promising to sell unclaimed luggage at lucrative prices.
“That’s nonsense, literally: don’t leave any kind of personal information,” says Oystein Lauer, senior communications consultant at Avinor.
Statement: Avinor's senior communications advisor, Øystein Løwer, warns people about websites allegedly selling lost luggage from Gardermoen. Photo: Helen Wattanapradit Jensen/Avinor
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Common in Europe
One profile is therefore tempting to sell forgotten luggage for NOK 16. “We urgently need to clear the warehouse at the airport and sell the luggage that has been missing for over 6 months!”, the profile writes.
Avinor is well aware of this type of scam in the past, as Dagbladet reported in December. It went quiet for a while, but it resurfaced this summer:
“We have been in regular contact with other major airports in Europe, which have experienced exactly the same thing,” says Loer.
The Ministry of Transport's legal department has contacted Meta, the company that owns Facebook, to obtain assistance in removing the pages.
“But we're seeing it steadily resurface, especially on Facebook,” the communications consultant says.
– Spray only
It is impossible, so to speak, to know who is behind the scam attempts. Avinor tried to send instant messages to the fake accounts, but received no response.
“I realize it can be hard to tell the difference between fake pages and our own. But we would never sell unclaimed luggage. Let me be clear, this is pure scam and hype,” says Lauer.
What happens next to baggage that is not collected at the airport?
– We do not have a major problem with unclaimed baggage, and we do everything we can to reunite it with its owners through the airline's ground handling companies.
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