What’s the most risky gift you can give during the holidays? If you chose the cell phone, you’d be correct. According to GetSafeOnline.org, a consumer awareness group in the UK, there are several items that are most-often used to scam online buyers. The iPhone and Samsung Galaxy rank at the top of that list. Other items on the list included PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game consoles, UGGs boots, Barbour jackets, and iPad minis.
These items are risky because many of the sites set up to sell the products are offering fake or counterfeit goods. Order an iPhone 6 for $100 and you probably won’t get it. Order UGGs from a site you’ve never heard of and you’ll most likely get boots made by a manufacturer you’ve never heard of.
Whenever you go shopping for a deal, you’re getting into dangerous territory. The risk is much higher when you’re responding to an email. Any email you receive, unless it comes from a company you’ve dealt with before, should be suspect. This holiday season is probably the worst to date due to the deluge of emails trying to sell all of the items on the above list as well as a whole lot of others.
As an example, I recently looked into those “Santa letter” emails. I picked the most recent one from my email junk box and looked up the sender. It was a scammer in Poland. I was even more curious when I saw that this Polish hacker owned 63 domain names. I began checking and soon found he was involved in many other online scams. What surprised me most was the range of “businesses” this guy dealt in.
Keep your holidays merry and bright by shopping with reputable retailers on websites you know. You may not get the lowest price, but you will get what you ordered.
