Thieves are in the business of stealing money and, especially during the holiday season, online shoppers can be vulnerable prey.
“People are spending with reckless abandon this time of year,” says Christopher Elliott, consumer advocate and author of “Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles and Shady Deals.”
Consumers are always looking for deals, he says, and in their zeal they can miss the warning signs of an online scam. “Their filter is broken,” Elliott warns. To avoid falling victim to these creative crooks, watch out for these five common cyberscams.
1. Fake Shopping Sites
With all the hype about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumers go into shopping mode expecting to find good deals. If you cybershop, you can get sucked in by websites selling counterfeit goods, or overseas-based sites that take your money and provide nothing in return.
2. Promises of ‘Free’ Stuff
Promotions to “Like” a company’s Facebook page in exchange for a $1,000 gift card or getting texts with similar ploys have become routine in recent years. Why? Because people fall for them. Identity thieves count on consumers entering their personal and financial information to get the freebie.
3. Buying Through Online Auctions or Classified Sites
If you’re looking for a deal or an offbeat item, turning to online auctions or classified sites could make sense. But they are also home to numerous scams. The traps can be set several ways, but, in the end, the rip-off typically will involve a request for you to send money through an electronic money transfer service (Western Union or MoneyGram, for example) or via a prepaid debit card. The reason: They’re the same as cash once they’ve been sent. So the chances of recovering a loss are tiny.
4. Phony Ads
If you’re planning to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday or any other large online shopping day, you want to see the big sales in advance. Cybercrooks know that. So they create sites that try to capture traffic from searches for sales fliers. What they really want is your personal information. Similar to the $1,000 gift card scam, the goal of these crooks is to get your personal information, or have you click a link that secretly loads your computer with malware that captures and transmits your information to them.
5. Holiday Vacation Deals You Don’t Want
If the idea of spending the holidays on a cruise or lying on a warm beach appeals to you, would you be tempted by an offer to go for free? Or to get your hotel for free? “Anytime you see the word ‘free,’ alarm bells should go off,” Elliott says. “Free cruise. Free all-inclusive vacation. Free flights. All of those things are signs that you are probably looking at a scam. The word ‘free’ is the lure.”
In these sorts of deals, at some point you’re going to be asked to pay “taxes” or a fee that supposedly is the one thing that isn’t free. “Once you buy in, they’ll promise you the world, and they’ll ask you to wire money,” Elliott says. “It’s in season this time of year.”
Article originally posted on usaa.com.
