GREENSBORO, N.C. — It's what we do. We Google to find what we're looking for. In this case, an Apple iPad. One site has it for $600, one for $700, and one for $300. Wow, are you lucky or what?!?!?
"We know from people who reported to us on Scam Tracker and in studies that 50% of the people who lost money in an online shopping scam lost money because the deal seemed so good. They just couldn't pass it up," said Lechelle Yates, Better Business Bureau.
The problem is you thought the deal was on Amazon, but it was a fake Amazon website that looked like the real thing. But how do you know if the scammers are that good?
"Think about when you see a link and you see something that looks great and you click on it and you go to that web page really scrutinize that URL and make sure that that really line up with what I think the URL should be for that brand," said Yates.
The fake Amazon websites that were out there included the URLs of Amazon-id.net and Amazon-id.no.net. They may seem like they would be legit, but they're not. The true Amazon site is Amazon.com.
A quick rule of thumb, you're looking for '.com' and you're specifically looking for the name of the company right next to the '.com'. Beware when you see a name with a hyphen or anything before the '.com'. You always want the name and the '.com' to be together.
Examples:
target.com
walmart.com
apple.com
wfmynews2.com
How is it that scammers can make the websites look so real & why are they allowed to use the name of the company?
Lechelle Yates explains there are two ways:
#1 Cyber criminals can cheaply buy phishing kits that allow them to recreate web pages of popular brands easily.
#2 Scammers to go to domain registration site sites like GoDaddy and others and purchase a found like domain names like Amazon 360, no questions asked.
"Real Time Digital Risk Protection Agency worked with a consumer affairs website just recently scanned the internet for fake Amazon sites and it found four live ones when it did the scan. And that's in spite of the fact that Amazon spends billions of dollars a year and employs 15,000 people dedicated to fighting fraudsters," said Yates.