Most sales promotion techniques are based on influencing a behavioral element. In the period of large sales, especially when it comes to Black Friday, service operators and sellers deal with a certain collective consciousness. People are definitely ready to spend more, devoting more time to purchases, but, paradoxical as it may, analyzing what is happening less. The ideal time for Internet scams is that everything happens quickly, and not everyone will be able to deal with the consequences in a hectic way.
Identified the most ambitious areas of attackers
- Counterfeiting of social pages is not a new direction, but concrete measures of struggle have not yet been developed. Scammers create pages and profiles, filling them with content similar in content to the strategic content of a particular brand. Traffic redirection works in their favor. At the same time, the owners of such profiles can invest more money in referral mechanisms and in the collection of subscribers, because in fact they are not going to bear other costs. They, in principle, are not going to sell you anything.
- More complicated is the mechanism of phishing attacks through sites. This requires a page that is very similar in interface to the original company page. Such a fake should be of high quality, but it will not work long – until the first wave of appeals of deceived citizens. And yet, many manage to take possession of personal information and access to the credit card of a client who did not recognize the fake.
Why is it so dangerous on Black Friday? People make many purchases on various sites on the Internet and for several days they are waiting for the goods that they managed to order. Having received 9 out of 10, for example, not everyone will realize in time that one of his applications was left unattended. While the client will check their balance on a credit card, attackers will have time to deceive hundreds of other people.
- By using a mobile application, even an experienced consumer can be fooled. Creating copies of applications is a painstaking work, which, unfortunately, attackers perform efficiently. It is mobile applications that request the maximum access to a bank card and are able to reset it in a matter of time.
- Emails have a good conversion rate. Business people are attentive to all incoming mail. What did not fall into spam is likely to be read and may become the launch button for the scam mechanism.
What to do? Carefully follow the links provided in the letters.
Why is it so difficult to distinguish a fake from an original?
- Firstly, the creators of a fake website or social page do not need to fill it with reviews and comments. Any activity on the page forms a certain layer of trust. Reviews can be both positive and negative, but, in any case, they will look natural.
- Fake domains have an extra letter or number in their name. We read in passing, often without catching typos, so clicking on the link is almost guaranteed. Especially when it comes to complex site names and names based on any puns. That is, in cases where it is easier for the client to read the name differently than it sounds in the original.