With the most romantic holiday of the year approaching, love is in the air – along with online scams and phishing. As couples prepare to celebrate with flowers, love letters and carefully selected gifts, cybercriminals are setting fake websites, offering perfect bouquets, beautiful engagement rings or even Apple gadgets. Kaspersky experts identified several scam schemes users might face while shopping for romantic gifts and gave practical advice on how not to be deceived.
Whether you are buying jewelry, flowers, the latest consumer technology or anything else online beware of offers that seem a little too good to be true.
All that glitters is not gold
Valentine’s Day is considered as one of the most romantic days of the year to make a proposal, and the popularity of buying engagement rings online ahead of this holiday is actively used by cybercriminals.
Kaspersky experts detected a fake website that closely mimics Amazon offering customers great deals on jewelry. The fraudulent scheme, aimed at stealing users’ Amazon credentials, encourages customers to enter their Amazon login and password, inadvertently compromising their account details to cybercriminals. This results in marketplace account takeover, potentially leading to other phishing attacks or personal and banking data leaks.
Flowers are one of the major symbols of February 14th. Around 250 million roses are grown specifically for Valentine’s Day every year. Inevitably this flourishing industry becomes attractive for scammers on the eve of the romantic holiday.
In a scam scheme spotted by Kaspersky, fraudsters do not even try to mimic the stores of famous brands, they create standalone fake websites with tempting offers and time-limited discounts. Vivid product images and beautiful descriptions are aimed at lowering the user’s vigilance. Cybercriminals can exploit consumer trust to lure unsuspecting buyers into paying for orders that are never fulfilled.
