“I saw the price, thought it was a great deal”: Scammers are targeting Guitar Center customers – here’s how not to get caught out
How prevalent are fake online guitar stores pretending to be your favourite retailers? As it turns out, prevalent enough to be costing ordinary people thousands, as guitar player Daren Maas recently found out for himself.
Maas was the target of a phishing scam, in which fraudsters created a website that looked like Guitar Center‘s online store, and lured him into buying what he thought was a cut-price Gibson Les Paul.
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For those unaware, phishing is the fraudulent practice of deceiving people into giving away their personal details, like passwords, personal information or credit card details. And according to Better Business Bureau (BBB), this year it could be on the rise.
In the case of Daren Maas, when he saw a Facebook ad – seemingly from Guitar Center – advertising a Gibson Les Paul for just $1,231.56, he was quickly lured in. Let’s face it, at that price we’d all have a look.
As Maas explains to News 6 Orlando, he believed it was a “great price”, and didn’t think it too suspect as it was also a “sale price”. He proceeded to go “through the order process” and placed what he thought was a legitimate order.
Shortly after, though, he received an email confirming his money had gone to someone called Shane Griffin, not Guitar Center. Maas says this was the moment he realised he had been tricked.
He later examined the URL of the site he’d been taken to, which read: “guitarcenter-us.com”, not the legitimate one, which is “guitarcenter.com”.
“I’m sure I’m not the only one that they got, they scammed,” Maas says. “They’re hunting people like this and it’s sad.”
At present, Maas is disputing the charge with his credit card company. “It’s a very bad position to be in and you feel very vulnerable,” he says.
Thankfully, as phishing scams like this have been around for a long time, experts have become savvy in how to avoid them.
As Holly Salmons, CEO of the Better Business Bureau, explains, customers should avoid clicking on ads that show up on social media feeds. “Go, yourself, directly to the business and then look for the product that you’re trying to search for. Those direct links could be what get you in trouble,” she says.
It’s also worth noting that social media ads are relatively inexpensive to run, especially if targeting a small subset of the population which is more likely to fall victim to a phishing scam, like older, less tech-savvy people, for example. If a scammer spends £20 on Facebook ads targeting people over the age of 60, they could reach hundreds of potential victims, and if just one makes a purchase – like $1,231, in the case of this Guitar Center scam, that’s a very high ROI for the scammer.
Put simply, if you see what looks like a good deal in a social media advert, open another tab in your browser and search for the deal yourself. If it doesn’t show up obviously and straight away on the purported retailer’s website, don’t go any further.
Additionally, you should watch out for unusually low prices. We’re all lured in by good deals – that’s how they work – but if it’s significantly less than the same or similar products offered on other retailer websites, chances are it’s too good to be true.
And finally, be sure to look out for subtle visual hints on any webpage you visit which could suggest it’s fake, like misspellings, or strange formatting that doesn’t look familiar.
The post “I saw the price, thought it was a great deal”: Scammers are targeting Guitar Center customers – here’s how not to get caught out appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
