Hey everyone, how you doing?
I wanted to talk today a little bit.
Javvad and I are here to talk about holiday scams.
First, what I want to talk about here is the "Amazon shipment is delayed" sorts of emails.
Very common about this time of year.
Everyone's ordering things from Amazon or online or whatever, right?
So half the time, what's interesting about these to me, is if you have ordered something
you're like, "where is my stuff?" and if you haven't ordered stuff and you get one of those,
you're like, "who ordered stuff on my account?!"
Right?
So it kind of plays both ways with that.
Do you see those a lot over where you're at?
Yeah, definitely!
We see a lot of those around and especially whenever there's -- during the holidays, Amazon
will sometimes -- or any of these kind of shopping sites, will do a special deal it's
like Black Friday or Prime Day or something like that, and everyone goes and -- if you're
anything like me, you need your Amazon fix, so there's a deal I have no idea why I need
that thing, but I'm gonna buy it.
So a lot of times you lose track of things that you've bought and things that you need.
And so, when these emails come through and they're getting a lot better, they use it
proper Amazon logo, and what have you.
The tendency is there just to click on it, and go through and say, "where's my order?"
"Why is it being delayed?"
So it triggers it's one of those things that triggers that emotional response, like, "Oh
my god, where's my thing?!
Oh my god, where's my holiday present I ordered for the family?!"
And my I don't want my kids to grow up hating me so it's a very effective scam.
Yeah, my wife is off and she said that I have "Prime-nesia", which is that I get so much
stuff delivered from Amazon Prime, that I don't remember what it is, but if it's not
showing up, you know, I'm very upset about that.
So no, I get where that comes from, yeah.
Yeah.
So for users that any -- if you ever get a notification like that from Amazon, the best
thing to do is actually navigate to Amazon on your browser, log in to your account yourself,
and check your order status there.
All the information will be there, just don't click it through the email.
Those fake holiday greeting cards.
So, someone sends you an email, and they'll be like, "Hey, someone loves you!"
They've sent you a greeting card, click here to view the greeting card, and soon as you
click it, it's game over!
Right, right.
And you know, for those of us that don't have anyone that really cares about them, it's
easy for you to spot, but those people that have a lot of friends and family, you know,
it is one of those things that you don't necessarily, you know, think is gonna be bad.
Right?
You think, "Oh, somebody did something cute!"
And every year we see different groups, marketing departments, things like that, putting together
things, right?
A few years ago, There was the one, where you know you could put somebody's face on
the little elf doll, that ran around in the background, right?
There's all kinds of stuff like that, that happens every year.
So these just kind of fall into the stuff that may or may not be normal type of behaviors.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's one of those things, because there's so many things, like you said, the elves,
or there's these deepfake-type apps out there, that, "Here, here's what you look like in
the holidays in a hundred years time."
And it just intrigues you.
It's interesting!
"Oh, what's someone done?
What's my, what body is my face on THIS year?"
So it's intriguing, it can be manipulated, tailored in many ways and because it's one
of those, holidays only come around once a year or is a rare occasion, people's guard
isn't up against those things.
We have the Black Friday things, right?
The deals that are so great you can't believe it.
Now, the thing about Black Friday is, I've been noticing a trend where you know over
here we have the big shopping day after Thanksgiving.
And the thing is.
for for a long time there were these ridiculous deals on Black Friday, I mean just ridiculous
crazy deals, right?
What I've noticed over the last few years, is they're not such great deals anymore.
However, we're still trained to expect these something-for-nothing sort of things.
Right?
You know, $100 laptops or $50 this and that and the other things.
And so, people are very easily tricked when they see an ad that says, "Oh it's Black Friday!"
And so they let their guard down, when it's something that's really too good to be true.
Do you have something like that in the UK?Or a time frame that runs like this?
Yes, over the last few years in the UK, we have also imported Black Friday, much to my
dismay.
So it's just another commercial holiday.
although we're not at that stage yet where the store doors open, and there's fistfights
and people yanking things from each other.
Oh, that's a shame, that's the best part of it.
Yeah on YouTube at least, yeah.
One of the other things I wanted to bring up, too.
And that is "credit card fraud activity" types of things, you know where you get the message
that says, "Hey your credit card's been suspended!"
You're like, "Oh man," you know, "I'm waiting for these things to come in, I've bought all
this stuff and now I'm not gonna get it in time!"
So you get the text message, you get the email that says, "Hey your card's been suspended.
Log in here and, you know, make sure that we know that this is an okay transaction,
so you can get it."
And of course, they steal your login information for your credit card and then the real fraud
happens from there, right?
Do you see that over there, too?
Yeah, we see a lot of that.
And this is something that's really -- it's a very difficult problem to address, because
when legitimately, your credit card gets blocked because of potential suspicious behavior,
that can have a big impact.
We were just talking about this earlier, that you could be in the middle of a like an Uber
ride, and if your card's blocked you've got no way of paying at the end of it that that
could impact your rating.
There are so many things we're dependent on it.
On an ongoing basis,.
So again, the fear is very real.
The impact is very real.
The best way is to look on the credit card, look at the number on the back, phone it up,
and speak to them directly.
And it does sometimes feel very inconvenient, 'cause you're put on hold for a long time.
But it's worth going through that pain, then that clicking on that link to unlock it and
lose -- having a greater loss.
Another thing I suppose we see, and this is kind of like a more emerging scam, and this
is it's targeted a lot around the holidays, but we will see it built into a lot of retail
or buying things, is the fake mobile app.
And mobile apps are the ones that we see quite a big shift towards, I mean, it's nowhere
near taking over the market, but it's gradually building up, where people will put in apps
that bypass the controls built into some of these app stores, and will be like, "Hey,
click here, and you'll get discounts.
Or, buy through here, and you get money back or cash back on these things.
And again, it's all about capturing your information.
Even the first few might be legit, you might get legit, like some cash back, or something
will show up on that.
And it sucks you in, and you tell your friends hey this is great I enjoy buying through it.
And next thing you know, the company disappeared, and it's run off with all your money.
Yeah, yeah.
You know when it comes to companies like that, one of the things I like to tell people is,
if you see something that you haven't worked with before, you're not familiar with, and
it's a great deal or whatever, obviously you're you want to Google the company, and see what's
going on.
But not only are you looking for bad reviews, but you're looking for like seven or eight
just raving reviews, you know.
If all of their reviews are just raving good reviews that's another big warning sign.
Because they'll go up and do that, and then get people suckered in, and like you said,
then these people go, "Oh, you know, I made a buck back I'm gonna tell all my friends
about it!"
Next thing you know, you have all these people in there, and then it all goes downhill.
At this time there's a lot of charity scams that go on as well.
And charity scams we see a lot of after any natural disaster.
They pop up, but holiday times and people want to feel good about themselves, it's a
season to share and care, and a lot of people are reflecting on that.
So just be very careful of that.
You'll get emails or you get websites pop-up, or you get promoted because it's very easy
to spend money on an ad, on a social media platform, and you know they don't do a lot
of checks on a lot of things.
So you can say, "Hey, donate to this," and you know, "These orphans can enjoy the holidays
as well."
And you might not even realize, and that's the thing on these ones.
Sometimes you don't even realize something you put five dollars and that's the end of
it.
And you think you've done the right thing, but, you know, the money hasn't reached the
ones do you think it can do.
But on the worst case they'll take that money, AND they'll capture your credit card details,
and they'll take more from you later.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you really want to research wherever you're giving the money and make sure that it's going
to real places.
This is an in-person sort of thing, right?
Like Craigslist or Facebook marketplace, where maybe you're meeting people in person, you
want to pick up that new whatever it is, that's hard to get, you know.
I'm gonna show my age here but back when I was a kid, Cabbage Patch Kids, right?
You look at like the Wii U's and some of those things during times, I mean this some of these
things are very very hard to get.
So you'll have these people that post up on, you know Craigslist or whatever, and they
say, "Hey, I've got this thing and so you go to pick it up and it's all nice and shrink-wrapped,
you get it home and it's a brick in a box, right?"
It's an old-time scam, but it's something that still continues to happen where people
will do that, or sometimes they'll even brute force and grab the thing and take off in a
car and run.
I mean there's lots of things going on, so when it comes to making these in-person transactions,
we need to be very careful as well as online.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I think that that kind of thought for me, that the main thing to be aware of is
you these scams, especially around the holidays, when there's lots of people out in shopping
malls, and looking for a bargain, is they're not all gonna be a phishing email.
They're not gonna be just the same old templates being used again again.
It could be an SMS message to your phone, it could be an in-person attack, it could
be a letter through your letterbox.
There are all these channels.
Be safe out there, pay attention to things, if it does look too good to be true, be very,
very cautious with that, and take some of the tips and tricks, so thanks for joining
us for this little chat.
Stay safe out here in this holiday season!