As Black Friday approaches, the South African Fraud Prevention Service has warned consumers to be wary of scams online. Black Friday takes place this Friday, 24 November.
The Head of Product Development at the Service, Nazia Karrim, has listed the most prominent scams this time of year.
“The scammers will make use of posts online, on social media and ads on social media, as well as targeting consumers via vishing calls and smishing messages, offering potential victims goods and services or even vouchers. But we also need to keep in mind that we’re going into the holiday season, so travel scams are also going to be coming out quite prominently. But sadly we are also going to see a very large increase in loan and vishing scams. And the problem with that is people are looking for access to funds to help buy the specials or take advantage of the specials that are taking place right now.”
Karrim says consumers should also be aware of impersonation sites when shopping online.
“You can use tools like the DNS scanner that’s available on the SAFPS Yima website to verify those URLs before you actually click on them to shop. I would actually also recommend that consumers download and install the Yima browser extension that can actually do this for you in the background. So, you don’t have to worry about doing that check while you’re shopping.”
Karrim says scammers will be promoting their fake online websites :
