We discuss 5 Black Friday scams that are popular during this time of the year that you need to watch out for.
Black Friday is only days away, which means online retailers like Amazon have been having a busy time with their annual deals week.
It also means that a number of popular Internet scams aimed at shoppers looking for those great digital deals are on the rise.
If you’re going to be using cyberspace to hunt down those perfect deals, remember to watch out for the Christmas Grinch who is not only looking to steal Christmas, but maybe your money and your identity too.
Fake competitions plague Facebook. Claims that by sharing a Facebook post and following a page puts you in with a chance to win goodies are prolific on the social networking site, but it’s all like-farming for spammy Facebook pages. We discuss it in more detail here
And this type of spam is likely to sky-rocket during these festive promotional weeks. Expect lots of posts floating around Facebook claiming that for Black Friday all you need to do is share a Facebook post to win gift vouchers, airline tickets, smartphones, even cars and luxury campers.
And remember, plenty of these scams will also try and lure you to entering your details at spammy, third party marketing webpages.
Ever been told you can get a iPhone for free? Or the latest tablet for a mere dollar because of a loophole? Well, chances are, you’re being baited. Seemingly impossibly good deals will plague cyberspace in the run up to the festive period, often appearing as adverts or in emails.
If you bite, you’ll be taken to the Switch. That impossibly great deal rarely looks as good in the cold hard light, when you find yourself having to give away all your personal details to spammy marketing companies, enrolling in “rewards programs”, signing up for various dubious subscriptions and all other sorts of hoop jumping.
Deals that are too good to be true probably are. And there is a good chance they’re just there to bait you into something that really isn’t that great.
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The Internet is bustling with counterfeit websites masquerading as legitimate online retailers. However, these sites are likely to peddle counterfeit goods or worse, just steal your money!
Counterfeit websites promote themselves through spam email, spammy adverts, through social media scams that can result in your friends unwittingly spamming their contact lists or may even target certain keywords in the search engines.
If you’re buying from a website you don’t know, remember these things –
1. Research it first. No online reputation is a BAD thing! Google the website address and see what comes up.
2. If the site accepts Western Union money transfer as its payment option, AVOID IT! The best payment option is credit!
3. Check when the site was registered with WHOIS. If the site is very new, AVOID IT!
4. Does the site have an about us page and a physical address where the business is based? If not, avoid!
5. If it’s deals seems too good to be true, then remember, they probably are.
There are lots of reputable websites out there, and some basic due diligence will soon reveal their legitimacy. But if the site feels off, or seems cheaply made or just seems like a generic shopping-template with little online feedback about them, we’d recommend avoiding it.
Black Friday is the perfect time for scammers looking to trick people into opening malicious email attachments.
That is because scammers know that millions of us worldwide will have very recently purchased items from the Internet. So Black Friday-themed email scams may ask us to…
~ “Open the attachment to view our recent purchase details”
Or
~ “There was an error with your online purchase, review the attachment for instructions to resolve.”
Or
~ “Your online payment was declined. See attachment for details.”
Or they may target the shipping angle…
~ “We were unable to delivery your parcel. Please see attachment to resolve.”
Or
~ “You were not in when we called. Please see attachment to re-arrange delivery.”
Any of these emails may be claiming to represent a legitimate online retailer or courier company.
The whole point of these emails is to trick you into opening an email attachment and subsequently infect your computer with malware.
The catch-all advice here is to avoid opening email attachments all together, unless you were specifically expecting one at a specific time from a specific person. Companies rarely ask you to open email attachments, and invoices, tracking info and other details are usually embedded in emails themselves, not inside email attachments.
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Lots of us will be using various online accounts this week, including Amazon, EBay, PayPal and our online banking accounts. It’s all part of the Christmas shopping experience.
So we may be rather alarmed when an email lands in our inbox from one of these companies warning of “suspicious activity” detected on one of those accounts. However, is the email really from that company?
It’s a form of phishing scam where the scammer send emails pretending to be from these companies, and they’re trying to lure us into clicking a link inside the email that leads to a spoof webpage that asks us to login. And when you enter that login information, it gets sent straight to the scammer!
So always be cautious of emails warning of suspicious activity on your account, and avoid clicking links inside emails, instead going directly to the relevant website directly. If you do click a link, always make sure you are on the CORRECT website before doing anything else!
