How to spot fake shipping notices and other tips to avoid last-minute shopping scams

Online shopping may make it easier to check off your gift list, but fraud and cyber security experts warn it’s also the easiest place to fall victim this holiday season.

“Most of these scams come from overseas, so they really focus on big luxury brands like Rolex, or, you know, Lululemon, or, you know, Louis Vuitton, or big box stores like, you know, Macy’s or Apple.” said Tony Sabaj, who works in the Chief Technology Officer’s (CTO) office at Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity firm.

The best way to play it safe is to buy directly from a reputable source, he said in an interview Sunday.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) ​​also warned about misleading ads on social media.

“Don’t click on an ad,” advised Kathy Stokes of the AARP Fraud Watch Network in an interview with ABC News earlier this month.

“Go to a trusted dealer that you’ve already done business with, that you have an account with.”

And if the price is too good to be true, Sabaj said it probably is.

“You know, people selling Rolexes for $250. Well, no reputable dealer is going to sell a Rolex for $250, so if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably a scam,” he said.

Another telltale sign of a scam is urgency, especially with email or text ads, Sabaj continued.

“Especially now that we’re in a time of crisis, we’re only a few days away from Christmas, so a lot of people might be more likely to fall for, you know, ‘Oh, it’s only available for the next two hours or three hours .’ Well, it’s usually a scam because they don’t know when you’re reading the email, so you know, they can’t say an appointment is only available for two hours,” he explained, adding that the same goes for scammers , which pretends to sell gift cards.

“Again, we see those scams where it’s like, ‘Oh, last minute gift – Buy a Best Buy gift card,’ and you fill out a form. And you’re not really buying a Best Buy gift card, someone steals your credit card information,” said Sabai.

Suspicious links were a top theme in recent warnings from BBB and FBI. Fake shipping notices have become more common this year, some of them coming through text messages from scammers pretending to be a shipping service.

Sabaj’s advice: If you’re not sure if the message is from the source it says it is, don’t click on it.

“Instead of clicking on that link, I go to the UPS website myself,” he said.

“I go to the web page and I type ups.com or usps.gov or fedex.com and then I type the tracking number and see if there’s actually a problem with that package as opposed to clicking on, you know, a random, sort of shortened, sort of hidden link that might be in a text message.”

He said one of the best proactive defenses against malicious links is to keep your computer security software up to date.

If you fall victim to an online scam, immediately change your password on the site the scammers pretended to represent and any other sites where you use the same passwords, Sabaj advised.

You can also report the scam to the impersonating company and the BBB to ensure others don’t fall victim in the future.

Stokes stressed the importance of not shaming victims of these scams.

“Understand that they were intentionally targeted by what are essentially transnational crime gangs. It’s a big problem. It’s not the victim’s fault.”