ROCHESTER, N.Y. – With just over a week until Christmas, you may be rushing to get your online shopping done to make sure those gifts are under the tree. But take a breath before you buy because that website may be a big fat fake.
News10NBC’s Deanna Dewberry recently investigated scam ads on social media that often take you to fake websites. Often those websites are cloned versions of the real retailer’s site. The cyber security firm Silent Push found literally thousands of scam websites that had cloned the sites of real retailers, making it virtually impossible to tell the difference.
One website leads you to believe Brooks Brothers is having a blowout holiday sale with a Supima cotton sweater on sale for $14. But the website is fake.
Dewberry found that sweater on the real Brooks Brothers site with a regular price of $108 and a real sale price of $75 and change.
Jeffrey Allan, Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology at Nazareth University: “What used to take a considerable amount of effort to create those types of sites now can be done in minutes.”
That’s because scammers are now using AI to clone real retail websites and take payments for products that never arrive.
Jeffrey Allan: “Some of the things that we might have looked at previously for scammy type websites you know, misspellings, poor grammar, now completely gone.”
Two years ago, Dewberry investigated a Facebook ad that takes you to a fake Vera Bradley website. She immediately knew it was a scam when she went to the About page filled with grammar mistakes. Today, that scammer’s AI-assisted fake site would be error-free.
Jeffrey Allan: “AI didn’t invent internet scams but it’s certainly making it a lot easier.”
Deanna Dewberry: “And so the AI tools to do this, they’re available for anyone?”
Jeffrey Allan: “My experience has been even the free tools can do a very, very compelling job and that only changes and gets better when you opt into paid tools where essentially there’s no limits at that point.”
So, Allan’s advice is to take a breath before you buy.
Jeffrey Allan: “Do a quick Google search and try to find things like Trust Pilot and the Better Business Bureau.”
Here’s Deanna’s Do List before you buy:
- Always check the URL. Scammers often create sites that name the retailer but add an extra word like officialbrooksbrothers.com instead of brooksbrothers.com.
- Watch for redirection. Often you’ll click on a link and be redirected to a site with a completely different URL.
- Watch for urgency. For example, the scammer might say you have only minutes to complete the order to get the deal.
- Never click on an ad you see on social media. You should always Google the retailer, scroll past the sponsored listings at the top of the page and click on the real search result.
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