Holiday shopping is in full swing. From now until Christmas there will be sales and discounts galore as stores all over try to entice shoppers. Just remember, where there is a gift to be bought, there is a scammer thinking of how they can make some easy money. In the last 5 years the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received 3.79 million complaints for a range of internet scams which resulted in $37.4 billion in losses. There are several threats that target consumers during the holidays, here are just a few: Brand impersonation, credit card skimming, and malvertising.
Brand Impersonation Scams: This Black Friday and beyond scammers are more likely to rip off big brand names. Here are a few fakes to look out for.
- Temu ads offering discounted PS5s. While scrolling through Facebook you are likely to find all sorts of ads for Temu. I saw several recently stating that you can purchase a brand new PS5 on Temu priced between $36.84 and $311.49. The ads even have videos of customer reviews of the product. The problem is, when you click on the video, it sends you to a bogus site, takes your money and information, and you never receive that PS5. Temu doesn’t sell them!
- Speaking of Facebook, they don’t only have false Temu ads. There are numerous scam sites and ads available on FB and will be more the closer to Christmas we get. That ad for a Barbie Dreamhouse $50.00 limited time….FAKE. How about that swing set you wanted to surprise your kids with? FB advertisements have you believing you can buy one nice and cheap, but those are scam sites set to steal your money. It is always wise to be skeptical of ads on FB, not just Black Friday.
- Fake Amazon offers great deals Black Friday. Fake online stores use Amazon’s branding to sell counterfeit products. Amazon is relatively low cost, convenient, trusted, and you can look at people’s wish lists. You can tell a fake by looking at the URL. When I Googled the URL below it said FORBIDDEN.
- Walmart makes it easy to buy gift cards. Searching for a gift but have no idea what to get? Buying for a loved one who has everything or is impossible to please? Walmart gift cards are the perfect choice! However, once again, check the URL to be sure it is actually Walmart before you buy. The website below might look like Walmart, but it is a fake and will take your money in exchange for absolutely nothing. Now you are out a gift and your money!
- United States Postal Service (USPS) now delivering…..fraud! With all the package ordering during the holidays, it can be tricky to keep track of what you ordered much less which package service will be delivering to your door. Scammers know this, and will send fake delivery notice emails that encourage you to click on them. Those fake emails send you to a fake USPS site where you are asked to pay a small fee to have your delivery processed. Once you put your payment info in, scammers can take your money and sell your details to other criminals. These scams are very common and easy to fall for, please use caution with any email from USPS.
Credit card skimmers: Credit card skimmers aren’t anything new, but their uses are ramped up during Holiday shopping season. These small illegal devices are installed on ATMs, gas pumps, or any other point of sale terminal and are used to capture credit/debit card information. Skimmers fit on top of real card readers and are designed to blend in with the rest of the machine making them difficult to spot. Customers call all the time with fraudulent charges on their debit cards and have no idea how they happened. More than likely they have been a victim of a skimmer at a gas station or grocery store. Did you also know that credit card skimmers can be found at online stores as well? These types of skimmers are malware injected into a website. When you visit the site, most likely you will have no idea the skimmer is even there. Cybercriminals infect multiple websites and build custom templates to trick victims into handing over credit/debit card details. A single script injection is enough to steal credit/debit card data. If you are shopping online and it looks like the site may not have been maintained in a while (outdated info, old copyright date, etc.), its probably a bad idea to enter your payment information.
Malvertising: Malicious advertising (malvertising) is a scam favorite. Fraudsters use online ads and sponsored search results to deliver malware to unsuspecting shoppers. All the scammer needs to do is fool someone into clicking on an ad that looks legit; malvertising doesn’t require a victim’s email address, login credentials, or personal information to spread malware. It is not always easy to tell a real ad from a scam, always use genuine search results. Even better, just navigate directly to a site yourself.
You can shop safely this holiday season by remembering a few things. If it is too good to be true, it most definitely is! Don’t get rushed into making decisions or let yourself be pressured. Always keep an eye on your financial statements, good rule of thumb in general. Protect your online accounts and use different passwords for each. Protect your devices by installing some type of security product that will scan for malicious content. Clean up your personal data online, scammers use publicly available info in their scams so by limiting what is out there you can better protect yourself.
