Hampshire Constabulary is warning residents to be careful of phishing emails from unknown shops, offering good deals as part of Black Friday & Cyber Monday.
Criminals tend to clone legitimate websites and post them under different web addresses so they look official to an untrained eye.
Remember to do your research, have others used the site & what was their experience.
Search for both the website address and the name that appears on the website’s branding as the two may be different.
If different reviews come back for both, this should be considered suspicious.
If in doubt look at National Cyber Security Center guidance for online shopping www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/shopping-online-securely.
For those of you who do not know what Phishing is, then here is a definition.
“Phishing is the act of attempting to trick the recipient of a malicious email into opening and engaging with it.
Article continues below this advertisement “The “sender” of the email deceives the victim by making the email appear to be sent from a reputable source, such as a government department, a supplier, or a customer of the business.”
Below is an example of what appears to be a legitimate website, in this case, Ray-Ban, but as you can see below, the web address looks suspect.
Well done on this little story. It is this time of year when the scammers come out of the woodwork (or somewhere worse) and prey on the vulnerable which we all are in some ways. What about doing a series of these posts – telephone scams, email scams and the rest. So often an approach by a scammer can often be just ignored whatever they threaten. Keep up the good work.
Useful, but a poor example. Only fools and horses would think that was the official Ray Ban website…. Scammers are far more subtle in their deception… such as this… the official web site is ray-ban.com It could easily be presented as rayban.com or ray_ban.com . Who would suspect it was fake ? Best advice is to NOT click on any ‘apparent’ web site hyperlink in an email ! Instead, go to your favourite web search engine and type in the company name to get the official web address. You may find that there is a subtle difference in the web addresses…. Passport renewal /driving licence renewal websites are out there that charge a fee for doing what is ‘free’ on the official website. If you’re not sure, don’t do it… ask a friend first…