Multiple Faces Detected
November 6th, 2020
It’s the week before Halloween. You just realized how quickly Halloween is coming up and realize you need a costume for that upcoming Halloween party. You find a website that looks legit, and see that its shutting down tomorrow! Oh no… that means you have to get that costume now. You then rush to purchase that costume and see that they promise overnight delivery, which benefits you since you waited until the last minute. You purchase the costume, wait a day or two… and realize it still hasn’t come yet. You try to reach out to the online store, but they are shut down like they promised with not even an email to question where your costume is. Was this a scam, or is your costume just coming super late?
Beware… The Pop-Up Online Halloween Store Scam Takes Nation By Storm
In this scam, the scammer creates a fake online Halloween store and lists fake costumes for sale. They take your payment information and promise that they will deliver your costume overnight. Once you enter your information, you close the website and wait a few days for your costume. Once its been a few days, you wonder where the costume you ordered is. You check your email, and realize that you didn’t even get a confirmation stating that your costume is even coming.
You go online and try to find the website, but the website that you purchased your costume from is shut down. There is no contact information left in sight to try and contact someone about where your costume is. That’s when you realize your costume isn’t coming, and the scammer just stole your costume money from you.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, many people are relying on online shopping to get their costumes. While many stores are open now, there are still people who would prefer to stay safe and get their merchandise online. However, because of this scam that is out there, it is important to know how to avoid this particular scam.
How to Avoid the Pop-Up Online Halloween Store Scam
- Only shop at well-known trusted websites. Sites like Amazon, Wal-Mart, or Target are all good websites to look at when shopping for a costume. They are well-known and can be trusted when purchasing costumes.
- Make sure there are no misspellings in the URL. If there are misspellings, it could be a sign that a scammer created a duplicate website that looks like the legit site to scam you out of your money.
- Do your research when shopping on an unknown website. If there are no customer reviews about the website or products on the website, this could be a sign that it is a fraudulent website.
- Be careful when providing your financial details when online shopping. If this information gets into the wrong hands, the scammer could steal all your information and use it to steal all your money. Only give your financial details through a secure credit card form on a trusted website.
- Don’t give away any in-depth personal information. You don’t need to provide the website with your social security number to purchase a product… If a website is asking for too much personal information that doesn’t make sense, find another website to shop at.
- Make sure the website you are shopping on has contact information. If it has no contact information, how are you supposed to ask questions to see where your product is? You would then have more of a likely chance that you would be scammed out of your merchandise. However if there is contact information, it gives you peace of mind that you can call someone when you aren’t sure where your product is.
- Only shop at websites that begin with “https://” because the “s” stands for secure. Websites like these are usually official and secure enough for you to shop at without any worried. However, if its an unfamiliar website, it is still a good idea to do your research on it before shopping.
Social Catfish is Here to Help You!
At Social Catfish, we want to help you verify the identities of those who have scammed you this Halloween season. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image, you can reverse search and see who the scammer was that you’ve been in contact with when dealing with this Halloween online shopping scam.
