Hello.
Little changes in how scammers deceive people, each time the bet is on greed and inattention. In search of the best offer, a person is so focused on getting a low price that he forgets to check who exactly is offering what to him. I have several dozen letters in my mail every month, in each of which people ask for help to return the money, since they sent them to the village of grandfather. For some reason, appealing to law enforcement agencies seems to them a bad story, but if we write that “Vasya Pupkin” is bad, then he will be ashamed and return all the money received. It is possible that naivety is one of the traits that characterizes those who write such letters and fall for the bait of scammers. In fact, there are many more who fall victim to divorce, but most simply take it as a lesson and resign themselves to losing money.
What does one of the most common schemes look like? A trap site is created, usually it copies a known resource, we will consider this using the example of a copy of Ozone.
Outwardly, a complete copy that does not differ from the original site, it is very easy to confuse them. But pay attention to the address bar.
Fraudsters place fakes on other domains, try to make the main address invisible, and use subdomains to make them look like the resource they are copying. In our example, they posted their snag on the pp.ru website – it has nothing to do with Ozone.
The task of scammers is to lead you to their fake website and make it so that you believe in it. For example, in Yandex.Direct contextual , an advertisement for a column from Yandex appeared, in which it is offered at a very low price. Yandex advertises its own solution, offers you an exclusive discount. You click on the offer and immediately see that the stars smiled at you, the price is so low that you need to take it here and now. And here all caution is turned off, especially if they try to push you not to think. I met mechanics in which they show a countdown counter – the promotion lasts just a few more minutes, you need to have time to buy on time. Or the number of remaining devices is shown as a minimum, such as one. You need to have time to grab luck by the tail.
Any mechanic that pushes you to do something as quickly as possible should already make you wonder who it is and why it is happening. In the Ozone fake site example, pop-ups even appear that offer an even bigger discount.
But the biggest question that should be puzzling is the cost of the goods – the same PlayStation 5 cannot cost so little. And this should alert you, any low cost is a sure sign of deception. Free cheese only happens in a mousetrap. As soon as you see an absurdly low cost, immediately check who is offering you this price.
In addition to promotional links, you may come across such offers in the mail, scammers disguise emails as if they were sent from a site that is being copied. It is always necessary to check the addresses from which the letter was sent, it does not always help to make sure that such a letter is real. But by checking several parameters, you can definitely make sure that you have scammers in front of you. And price is one of the factors.
Any kind of platform is used for deception, for example, it can be Wildberries. The more popular the site, the more scammers will rely on your trust in it.
When you are offered to discuss products outside the site, this is a sign of fraud. As well as any offer of payment directly, often at a discount. There can be a lot of explanations here, for example, they will tell you that there will be no site commission this way. But the fact is that this is how scammers try not to leave traces. Any transfers by phone number, payment to the card – all these are signs of fraud. But paying for a legal entity does not at all guarantee that you will avoid problems, another thing is that the likelihood of this is much less.
There are a huge number of methods that scammers come up with, but none of them work if you show elementary caution. For all the time I have never been able to deceive such schemes, since they are built according to the same model. Schematically, it can be represented as follows:
- Impact on the emotions of the victim – a profitable offer (greed), a danger to your money or something else (not wanting to lose anything);
- The second step is to propose a quick and efficient way to “solve” the problem;
- Final – you lose money.
When I talk about how not only greed can be a motivating motive, I recall different stories in which they put pressure on the danger of losing something. For example, you have a domain name, and then suddenly you see that it will be deleted, you need to pay for the domain renewal within a day.
Such a letter was sent from an address that has nothing to do with the domain name registrar.
It is clear that these are scammers, this type of divorce is well known. But the scheme still works, scammers collect money from the victims. Sending letters is not very expensive, the benefits are obvious.
Of the relatively new types of such letters, I’ll tell you about the fines from the “Gosuslug”, they send you a letter about the debt and an offer to pay it at a discount. Many people rush to pay their “debt”, and the site completely copies “Gosuslugi”, but the money goes to scammers. The conclusion here is simple – you can fake any kind of resources. If you receive an email of this kind, then you do not need to click on the links in it. Just open your personal account on “Gosuslugi” and see what is there in the accruals section. You do not need to follow the links that have been carefully sent to you. And it instantly removes a lot of problems, you become protected.
Please don’t believe in fairy tales and cheap electronics. There is always something unpleasant behind a low price. Think about the fact that the probability of losing money, nerves in such situations is maximum, meticulously study the sites and do not get fooled by “closed sales”, separate zones for the elite on resources with strange addresses, and so on. All this is a lie, and you need to be aware of it.
Every year we have up to a dozen articles about scammers and the schemes they use. Our readers are protected from most of these schemes, but the number of people caught remains the same. The scheme changes a little, and as if there was no previous experience, they again fall into a mess. Can this be avoided? Undoubtedly. You need to be a little careful, and no one can deceive you. Calculation on emotions, on making a person act emotionally, thoughtlessly. Include reactions that are unconditional and do not involve the brain. And my advice is very simple – before you get scared, catch your breath, count to ten and see what exactly they want from you. So you will avoid problems, proven by personal experience. And, of course, check out the links below, there are many different stories and scam schemes.