Welcome to another tech tip Tuesday today, we’re going to talk about the scams that we’re currently seeing out in the marketplace.
What type of holiday scams are we seeing out in the marketplace? I want to talk about four of them that we’re seeing that are pretty prevalent. And the first one is mimicking charitable websites. We’re seeing bad actors go out and make basically copies of legitimate charitable websites and they’re trying to send you an email, get you to click on something in social media, or possibly even text you something and tell you a sad story about how this charity is helping. And it’s actually not the real charity, and they ultimately may be stealing your username and password or either just stealing the money that you donate or possibly even stealing your credit card information. The second is the hot toy of the holiday season scam. And with that, they’re showing you the hottest toy of the season, and they’re putting it either on an email, if they can text you a link to it, or they could even put it out on social media. And the deal with this is ways to actually know it’s a scam. It’s oftentimes the product is available number one, and oftentimes it has a greatly reduced price. A too good to be true type price. And they’re hoping to get you ultimately to put in your credit card. And of course, your product is never coming. And the third one is ultimately the shipping scam. And they are sending out a lot of times on text. They’re sending out information from a major carrier like United States Postal Service, FedEx, or Ups, and they’re saying to update something or log in in order to be able to view your package that is coming to you. You always want to go back to the original email that came from the vendor in order to track packages. Don’t let them send you an update and click on that to actually go and track the package. Or you could go back to the vendor’s website and do it from there after you’ve logged in. And the fourth one is paying for items with gift cards. This is the way that the bad actors are having you pay for items using a gift card, which is really easy for them to be able to monetize that gift card. And it’s pretty much untraceable or very hard to trace as to who spent that gift card because you can just walk into the store. There are no real credentials being used, or you could even use that online with the fake accounts, so they’re able to ultimately just monetize those gift cards.
So those are four topics that we would like for you to keep in mind this holiday season. We like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Thank you for watching.
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