LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — A weekend of shopping sales is just a week away, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday quickly approaching. While you would expect to see incredible deals online, what’s the difference between an unbelievable bargain and a price tag that you shouldn’t believe?
“If something is too good to be true, then your defenses are already going to be down trying to take advantage of that in the moment option,” said John Wood, service delivery manager for 46Solutions.
Wood and 46Solutions provide a security training platform to guide people through training on what sort of scams and viruses are popular, and how to avoid those things.
“Viruses do tend to follow the trends of the culture and the economy trying to play on different things like summer blowouts or holiday deals or back to school,” Wood said. “It very much follows what is the most susceptible area to look at.”
Right now, holiday shopping provides an area of vulnerability.
One example that Wood looked at was a website attempting to sell shoes from Dick’s Sporting Goods. The sporting store does sell shoes like Nike Dunks, along with a wide variety of other sportswear and equipment. The actual website does have Black Friday deals of up to 50% off.
“It says that it is Dick's Sporting Goods,” Wood said, looking at the fake website. “Whenever I go to the URL it would say something else that is similar, just kind of like a misspelling here or there.”
The website Wood is looking at says dicksportnggood.com. The real website is www.dicksportinggoods.com.
Did you catch that? The first website looks super similar, but is missing a small ‘i’ and an ‘s’ off the end. The hope is that shoppers will see the deals, not the URL.
“Hackers are playing more on the emotions and the rush of holidays and trying to take advantage of people's mindsets instead of just focusing on simple tactics,” Wood said. “So there's a lot more, ‘hey, take advantage of this deal right now.’”
Many of the ads from those websites say the deal is only for the day, even though the fake websites advertise the deal for multiple days. There are other scams to be on the lookout for during shopping season as well.
“Just be very cautious about getting text messages from numbers you don't know,” said John. “Whether you get emails from senders you don't know, you can click on the username or that email address at the top and try to make sure it matches who they say they are.”
“Just keep an eye, if it's too good to be true, just do your due diligence, research the website, look for reviews,” shared Wood.
