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This article is from Trend Micro
This week we’ve found a large number of scams that you need to watch out for, including ones relating to Mother’s Day, Zelle, Moderna, Netflix, Amazon, and PayPal. Would you have been able to spot all the scams?
As Mother’s Day approaches, many people have started looking for gifts for their moms. Naturally, scammers have created scam shopping sites that aim to exploit you and steal your money/information. This week we found that they’ve been impersonating Crown & Paw, a pet supplies shop, and spreading links to fake websites via text messages:
Crown & Paw:
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Besides online shopping scams, phishing is one of the most commonly used tactics by scammers. Conventionally, while impersonating famous brands, they send out fake text messages and emails containing phishing links and try to entice you into opening them with various lies.
In such phishing schemes, the links will take you to fake log-in pages that appear to belong to various brands. These pages require you to submit log-in credentials to download a software update, change account settings, or whatever other tasks the scammers have asked you to complete. Here are some examples:
Ever received text messages about your Netflix renewal? We’ve written about a lot of fake text messages from Netflix before, and this week they are circulating again:
The link will take you to a fake Netflix log-in page. If you follow the instructions and sign in, or even enter your credit card information, scammers will record everything and use the information to take control of your Netflix account!
We’ve seen Zelle scams before, and this week we detected a lot of phishing scams impersonating Zelle:
As mentioned, the link will take you to a fake Zelle page. The log-in info you’ve submitted here will end up in scammers’ hands, and they can thus hack into your Zelle account. Don’t let them!
Do you use PayPal? Although it’s quite convenient for transferring money online, scammers also find it convenient to trick people. Last month we reported on PayPal scam text messages, and this week they went viral again:
Using fake payment notifications or security alerts as an excuse, scammers want you to click on the phishing link that goes to a fake PayPal page. Don’t type in any credentials here!
In other cases, the phishing links lead to online survey pages that state you can claim a gift by filling out an online questionnaire. After you complete the questionnaire, you are prompted to enter credit card details before your “gift” can be delivered:
Amazon survey scams are anything but new to us, but somehow they just keep on thriving. This week, scammers promoted fake Amazon gift cards as a Valentine’s Day gift to lure you into clicking on the attached phishing link:
Of course, there would be no gift, and you could end up exposing all your credentials. Be careful!
“Congratulations! You can get a $90 Moderna gift card!” Posing as Moderna, scammers try to trick you into clicking on the embedded phishing link to “claim your gift.”
We also observed this mask mandate survey scam. Again, don’t get scammed!
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