Protect yourself from Black Friday scammers with these 3 tips

Black Friday It’s a great time to buy discounted Christmas gifts. It’s also the day of the year most likely to fall victim to an online scam, according to the director of Norton’s Scam Research Labs.

Each year, about 50% of online consumers are defrauded by various schemes aimed at stealing money or data, Norton’s Leyla Bilge told Fox News Digital. Of these robberies, she said, 30% take place on Black Friday, 16% on Christmas Day14% take place on Christmas Eve; and 11% occur on Cyber ​​Monday.

But as shoppers take advantage of holiday deals, cybersecurity company The research lab identified the most common online scams and Bilge shared tips on how to avoid each of them.

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Shoppers search for Black Friday deals at South Coast Plaza on November 25, 2022, in Costa Mesa, California. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

1. Online scams

Bilge said “hundreds” of fake stores appear online every year.

“It’s very easy to create a fake online store that looks really realistic. The look and feel is amazing. You won’t be able to spot it very easily. So even we sometimes have trouble determining if something is real or not,” Bilge said. “You have to think twice about scams because they are now very complicated and sophisticated, especially with AI. Things are becoming much more powerful.”

But common sense, new tools and a few tactics can be used to spot them.

One sign that an online retailer might be fake is if its deals are “too good to be true.”

“If something is sold for, say, $100, you’re not going to get it for $10,” Bilge said. “So you’ll never get a 90% discount, but usually you get these kinds of crazy discounts on such websites.”

Fake online stores, fake charities and “smishing” are some of the most common methods scammers use to take advantage of holiday shoppers. (Kurt Knutsson)

Often, Bilge said, the payment pages of these fake sites provide useful clues.

“Usually on the first page you’ll feel like they’re always going to tell you that you can pay with whatever is possible, PayPal, with Google, Google Pay or Amazon or Apple Pay or, you know, Visa, Mastercard, etc.,” Bilge said. “But when you actually check out…they’ll either tell you to pay with a gift card because it’s hard for us to track it…or they’ll tell you to do it with PayPal.”

“If you see these kinds of inconsistencies between the first page and the last page, you have to be very careful,” she continued.

Taking a look at a website’s URL can also help, Bilge said.

“Let’s say (the fake online store) could be a knockoff of Amazon,” she said. “You might want to check if the website name actually matches the brand, because let’s say you would have Amazon.com, (their website might be) Amazonbeautifulverycool.com, something like that.”

Paying attention before capitalizing on a great deal could save your wallet and private information, she said, as could researching the seller themselves if you’ve never shopped there before.

“You may want to be very careful and check with third-party organizations that actually provide reviews of our organizations,” Bilge said. “We actually have an AI-powered chatbot, which we call Norton Genie, that a user can easily check.”

About 30% of Black Friday shoppers fall victim to scams, according to Norton data. (iStock)

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Buyers can also crowdsource to spot drawbacks. Reddit’s scam subreddit Reddit.com/r/scams has nearly a million subscribers, many of whom will quickly answer questions about suspicious websites based on their experience or using their own knowledge. technological doing.

A quick Google search often also reveals fake online stores. The Better Business Bureau also has a searchable list of accredited and non-accredited businesses that can be used.

Always look for the lock icon in the browser’s address bar, indicating that the website is using a secure connection. You can also check the website URL to see if it starts with “https” instead of “http”, which would also indicate a secure connection.

Finally, check the company’s website for a physical address and phone number. If you’re not sure if it’s legitimate, you can do a quick search on Google Maps to see if the business appears.

2. “Smishing” package delivery scams

Many consumers receive a higher volume of packages during the holiday season when ordering gifts for friends and family.

But this makes them more vulnerable to “smishing” scams: fake text messages or emails from UPS, US Postal Service, Amazon, etc., sent by fraudsters to collect personal information.

“They will tell you that there is a problem with your payment, or that you will have to make an additional payment in order to actually steal your money,” Bilge said. “Or they might try to compromise some personal information so they can use it for another type of attack that might happen later.”

One method of detecting these scams is to take a closer look at the phone number or email address the correspondence is coming from.

Smishing is a scam in which a scammer attempts to imitate a reputable company via text message. (CyberGuy.com)

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“You can check the sender or email address. In most cases there will be random characters and @gmail.com numbers, which is really suspicious. I mean, that will never happen “Bilge said. “You will never get that email from Amazon or UPS with an email like that.”

Generally, emails like this can be ignored. According to the United States Postal Inspection Service website, it will not send customers or text messages without a customer first requesting the service with their tracking number. Even if emails are requested, the agency said, those correspondences will never contain a link.

“If you have not initiated the tracking request for a specific package directly with USPS and it contains a link: do not click on the link,” the Postal Inspection Service wrote.

Black Friday Shopping (Daniella Heminghaus/USA TODAY NETWORK/File)

3. Charity scams

Thieves often pose as well-known charities via email, text messages or using fake websites. They can also completely fabricate charities for noble causes in order to deceive unsuspecting donors into misspending their hard-earned money.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), one way to spot a fake charity is how they correspond with you. Although charities are exempt from the National Do Not Call List, they must comply if you ask them to stop calling you, the FCC wrote on its website.

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The agency also suggests checking the phone numbers and URLs of charities before donating to them. Services like Norton Genie or even Google and Reddit.com/r/scams can be useful tools in this regard.

The Philadelphia FBI office warned consumers that donations should still be made by check or credit card.

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“If an organization asks you to donate cash, gift cards, virtual currency, or wire transfer, it’s likely a scam,” the agency wrote.

Donors should be wary of charities that claim to help victims of recent high-profile disasters and should check the name of the charity to ensure it does not have a “copycat name.”