Beware, fake e-commerce pages with attractive prices are stealing money

For some time, false pages of eCommerce sites have been circulating that, by different methods, seek to steal confidential user data such as their credit cards.

Some time ago, cases of apocryphal Amazon pages were known and recently, a similar case was known with a website that passes itself off as Mercado Libre.

The number of fraudulent websites detected in the world increased by almost 3% in the last quarter of 2021. Within this scenario, sites posing as e-commerce platforms made up 9.4% of all bogus websitesonly being surpassed by the categories of social networks and finance, according to data from Eset.

On this occasion, the security company analyzed the case of a site that tries to impersonate the aforementioned eCommerce platform. It is a scam aimed at different users from Latin America, in particular from Colombia and Brazil.

How do these types of scams work?

When the user clicks on the purchase option, he is redirected to a site where he is asked to enter certain data to make the supposed purchase. The information required, in the last case analyzed, for example, is full name, email, identity document, personal address or telephone number.

They are data that can be used to carry out identity theft or fraud attacks.or they can be sold on underground markets on the dark web for a few cents.

Second, the cybercriminals ask the victim for their financial information to make the payment for the alleged product. That way they get the card numbers and security codes.

Both in this case and in others, there are some indications that allow the deception to be detected. Here is a list of some issues that can raise the alarm signal:

1. Fake sites replicate aesthetics of the one they want to imitate but when looking at the URL it is seen that it is not the original page, but a fake version.

2. Products are offered for values ​​that do not match reality. They are usually extremely attractive prices or financing options are included that are not found in the market.

“These ads promote great deals on expensive products like TVs, computers and cell phones, motorcycles, etc., which should be a second red flag (in addition to the domain) for the user: the prices are too good to be ignored. real. For example, a Reddit user commented that he came to the site for an offer of an electric scooter for only 160,000 Colombian pesos, the equivalent of 42 US dollars,” says Martina López, the company’s Computer Security Investigator, in relation to the incident. of Free Market.

3. Messages that request certain actions. Sometimes cybercriminals send emails or messages where the user is asked to enter their account to perform a certain action, which may be to certify an alleged purchase or update their data. The unsuspecting victim clicks on the sent link and is redirected to a bogus site where the information is stolen from them as mentioned above.

What precautionary measures to take

1. Always check the URL of the pages you enter

2. Carry out a complete web search to see if the offer received by mail, message or whatever is real.

3. Report any security incident so that it is not repeated in the future. Make the complaint in court as well as report the sites in question so that they are alert and notify users or share relevant information to avoid this type of scam.

4. Have strong passwords and second factor authentication enabled on all accounts.

5. Have a security solution.

6. Have all operating systems updated.

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