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Black Friday is one of Australia’s biggest shopping days – and therefore, one of its biggest scam days.
And with Australians losing $14.9 million to scammers in the past year, according to ScamWatch, the last thing they need is more taxpayer money.
E-commerce expert Sabri Sadi said Black Friday is particularly lucrative for fraudsters as shoppers are in “heat mode” and more purchases are made online.
“Their guard is down and they’re open to offers,” he said.
With big brands promoting legitimate deals and discounts, alarm bells that might normally ring at the sight of a too-good-to-be-true offer are more likely to be silenced.
Suddy, founder of digital marketing agency King Kong, said scammers would use real brands, such as Mecca, Frank Green and Gorman, to create fake ads and even entire fake websites.
Here, customers are tricked into entering their credit card details for what they believe to be a stolen purchase – only to find out that the theft is on them.
Suddy said there are steps people can take to prevent falling victim to fraudulent emails or text messages around Black Friday.
“The biggest thing you should always do is look at the URL. Fraudsters will set up a URL that is very close to the real name of the company,” he said.
Prospective customers can then Google the actual brand and verify that the real web address matches the one in their email or SMS.
Sudi also urged people to use payment services such as PayPal, which come with buyer protection and high levels of fraud awareness.
“Basically, you have to be very, very suspicious,” he said.
Sudi said the scammers are not targeting specific demographics, but mass purchasing phone numbers and contact details under false pretenses to try to reach as many people as possible.
And there’s no real way to avoid becoming a target.
“There will always be scammers. These people are always one step ahead,” Sudi said.
“If you’re anything like me, I get between five and 15 scam calls a day.”
And with rapidly developing technologies like voice cloning and AI, scammers can target more and more people with smaller operations.
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Suddy said the call centers of the past are disappearing, replaced by AI-powered robo-callers who can make “hundreds of thousands” of scam calls a day.
And while institutions like banks have safeguards in place, they are hardly foolproof.
“Eventually, fraudsters will find a chink in the armor,” Suddy said.
“People just need to be very aware of this and treat any potential scam messages as very suspicious.”
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