Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days in Australia – and consequently, one of the biggest scamming days too.
And with Australians having lost $14.9 million to scammers in the past year, according to ScamWatch, the last thing they need is more taxpayers’ money.
E-commerce expert Sabri Sudy said Black Friday was especially lucrative for scammers as shoppers were in “heat mode”, and more and more buying was done online.
“Their guard is down and they are open to offers,” he said.
With major brands promoting legitimate deals and discounts, the alarm bells that might normally ring at the sight of a too-good-to-be-true offer, are more likely to be drowned out.
Sudy, founder of digital marketing agency King Kong, said scammers would use real brands, such as Mecca, Frank Green, and Gorman, to set up fake ads and even entire fake websites.
Here, customers are enticed into entering their credit card details for what they think is a steal of a purchase – only to find out the theft is on them.
Sudy said there were steps people could take to help prevent them falling victim to scam emails or text messages around Black Friday.
“The biggest thing to always do is to look at the URL. Scammers will set up a URL that is very close to the company’s real name,” he said.
Prospective customers can then Google the actual brand, and check if the real web address matches that in their email or SMS.
Sudy also urged people to make use of payment services such as PayPal, which come with buyer protection and high levels of scam awareness.
“You have to be very, very dubious, basically,” he said.
Sudy said scammers weren’t targeting particular demographics, but mass purchasing phone and contact data under false pretences to try to reach as many people as possible.
And there’s no real way to avoid becoming a target.
“There are always going to be scammers. These people are always one step ahead,” Sudy said.
“If you’re anything like me, I get between five to 15 scam calls a day.”
And with rapidly developing technology such as voice cloning and AI, scammers can target more and more people with smaller operations.
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Sudy said the call centres of yore were disappearing, replaced by AI robo-callers that could turn out “hundreds of thousands” of scam calls a day.
And while institutions like banks have protections in place, they are hardly foolproof.
“Ultimately, scammers are going to find a chink in the armour,” Sudy said.
“People just need to be very aware of that, and treat any potential scam messages as very dubious.”
