Cyber Monday opportunity for scammers – danger of online shopping during Black Week
With the start of the ongoing Black Week began a hot period in e-commerce. Attractive discounts prompt pre-Christmas shopping in advance. Poles loved the upcoming promotional actions like Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. This is also the time of year that scammers are waiting for. Caution should be exercised at every step, from choosing a store to picking up your order.
The Guardian reports that in the UK alone last year online shoppers were scammed of £2.5m during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. He cites data from the local police.
According to a survey conducted by BioStat agency for SMSAPI, this year as many as 62.5 percent. Poles plan to take advantage of store offers during the upcoming Black Friday or Cyber Monday. No wonder that fraudsters are particularly active at this time with such a large pool of potential victims.
– It happens that customers, wanting to take advantage of temporarily limited promotional actions, reach for external funding. They perceive that the savings resulting from obtaining a lower price exceed the cost of the loan taken. However, it is important to be cautious and not to become a victim of fraudsters already at this stage, who may impersonate loan companies in order to extort data. What’s more, it’s worth taking the time to choose the best loan offer, e.g. using financial comparison sites – says Tymon Zastrzeżyński, the co-founder of pozyczkaportal.pl and Loando.pl and Co-Founder at Loando Group.
Fraudsters impersonate well-known brands
Cybercriminals can be expected at every stage of online shopping. Scammers create fake sites with products offered at surprisingly low prices. Making a purchase from such a site can result in, at best, not receiving the goods you ordered, at worst even losing all the money from your bank account. We can come across such suspiciously attractive promotions e.g. by means of an advertisement, e.g. displayed on Facebook.
Even if you place an order in a trustworthy place, you may receive from fraudsters an SMS or email message such as. asking for a small additional payment for the transaction. Mostly in such a message a link leading to a fake payment site is sent. The victim is asked to provide payment card details or log in details to online banking. Using the information received, a cybercriminal can completely clean out a bank account, as well as set up a paid subscription, whereby a certain amount is automatically transferred from the victim’s account every month.
We made an order in a verified store, no one asked us in a suspicious message for additional payment, so our vigilance decreases. This is exactly what scammers count on when they impersonate delivery companies such as InPost and Poczta Polska. CyberRescue has already reported this month on attempts to phish for payment card details using the image of the Polish Post. Victims received a pending email. You have to pay 4.99 PLN to receive it. A similar warning issued by CyberRescue related to fake SMS messages allegedly from InPost. This time the scammers asked for a payment of 4.27 PLN. Each of these cases involved phishing and accessing funds from the victim’s bank account.