Experts warn shoppers to be vigilant against scams this holiday season
30 percent of scams reported to the BBB last year involved online shopping
(InvestigateTV) — Online shopping may save us time during the holidays, but consumer advocates said it also opens the door for scammers.
Before checking out, they urge shoppers to verify who they’re buying from and whether the site is legitimate.
“The threat of online shopping, of course, is that scammers like to impersonate and steal people’s money in a couple of different ways,” said Cliff Steinhauer with National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA).
Steinhauer said one of the biggest risks is impersonation sites – basically fake pages designed to look like major brands.
“You might see, like, everything looks pretty close to the real thing, but there’s a difference in the URL or in the address bar,” he cautioned. “Which sometimes they can do little tricks to actually hide the address bar where you can’t see what site you’re really on.”
He said scammers know the holidays bring a flood of online deals and they hide their traps among them, hoping shoppers won’t notice the warning signs.
“And they’ll just have all these deals that are usually too good to be true to get you to even go to that site in the first place. So that’s one of the biggest red flags, of course, is too good to be true offer,” he shared.
Melanie McGovern the Better Business Bureau (BBB) asked those that run into a problem — even if they don’t lose money — to report it.
“So, let’s say you’re shopping, you find a retailer you’ve never heard of, you go over to a search engine, you type in the name of that retailer, oh, look, a BBB scam report popped up,” McGovern laid out. “Then you know that you want to use caution or maybe avoid that website based on other people’s experiences. That’s why it’s so important to report any online purchase fraud to the BBB.”The BBB also said to check a retailer’s reputation before entering credit card information – a quick search can prevent a holiday headache.
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