Halloween’s just a few days away and Online portals are busy luring shoppers with some really cool offers, deals and discounts.
But before you go all out with your shopping spree, you ought to educate yourself on cyber security measures, particularly online shopping hoaxes that plague the Internet. Scammers are often after making some quick bucks or stealing sensitive information such as credit card and bank account details. Don’t fall for such hoaxes and scams.
Spam URLs are the most common way of luring a victim during the Holiday season. But there’s a simple way of telling a spam URL from an original one.
Checking Domain Name…
Look at the domain extension – such as .com, .org, .net. etc. carefully. The text which comes just before the domain extension is the domain name of the website.
The same logic applies to all websites. For instance, when you log in to your bank account for net banking facilities, ensure that that text/name just before the domain extension is that of your bank and not some random text.
Taking advantage of the e-commerce conglomerate’s festive rebate season in the India, this ‘lucky spin deal’ was doing the rounds on the Internet.
Clicking on such links could mean spammers are getting access to saved passwords on your browser or any details that might be saved on your system or on sites. So how do you know whether such ‘deals/offers’ are authentic or not?
Common sense, goes a long way!
Sometimes consumerism can make us devoid of common sense. Keep yours intact to avoid falling for scams. Do not go for things that are too good to be true! An iPhone 7 by spinning a wheel? Really? No lucky draw, no survey, no proper marketing. Now that is as ‘phishy’ as it gets. For the uninitiated, such hoaxes are an indirect attempt at phishing i.e. accessing details to con you out of money.
Know more about Phishing Scams, here.
The point I am trying to make is, don’t just click on something because it looks irresistible. Dig a little deeper. Do a little more research.
Take a long and hard look, at the page you are on…
That’s what I mean by digging a little deeper.
Let me cite the ‘Lucky Spin’ Page. Look at the detail cross-section below:
The page in question here also listed ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ on Facebook, However, all the links were static i.e. if you clicked on any of the profile names or ‘view more comments’, there was no re-direction.
Lesson learnt? Before grabbing your offer, take a good look at the suspect page and URL and know for sure if it indeed is an offer or a sorry attempt to fool you for whatever reasons.
