With more people working remotely and shopping online than ever before, scammers have a captive audience to conduct phishing activity, leading to a significant increase in fraudulent behavior.
According to the cybersecurity company BrandShield, there has been a significant increase in websites registered under deceptive domain names intended to trick consumers into sharing personal information and credit card numbers. In the month of April alone, there was a 140% increase in new websites registered with the word "Costco" in the domain and a 41% rise in those containing the word "Walmart," according to BrandShield data.
We talked to Yoav Keren, CEO of BrandShield, about how brands and consumers alike can avoid e-commerce scams while shopping online during the pandemic. While it might seem obvious to make sure you're on a company's official website, Keren said it's easy to click an outside link and find yourself on a page that looks remarkably similar. He said to look for signs of verification and to double and triple-check URLs.
"Usually [social media scammers] will start by posting legitimate posts and at some point will either private message people to perform a scam, or put in a link to a fraudulent or phishing sites," he said. "It really costs nothing to do that, it's just time spent for these fraudsters to create these scams online. The cost is nominal. Starting a website today is nothing. Opening an account on Facebook costs zero.
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