Tis the season... To be wary of Online Scams

As Black Friday and Cyber Monday come around once again, scammers are pushing fake products to your customers more than ever. We know your customers are looking for good deals and amazing prices that are on offer - but they are falling for the dreaded trap.?

Big brands are participating in Black Friday and Cyber Monday all over the globe, so how can the customer recognise when a deal is simply too good to be true? What’s more, this time of year is notorious for people feeling as if they should spend money due to the massive savings and the Christmas gift giving season approaching. People are often swayed by good deals due to something being originally out of budget. Unfortunately, with the cost of living rising, people are wanting to spend less and have belief in a good deal more, scamming them has become child's play for those looking to profit off of people’s trust.?

The online scamming dilemma is where you come in. As a brand, you have to remind your customers of how they can spot a fake and how to know when they’re about to get scammed. Scammers have become experts in acting like legitimate brands and using online platforms to sell products that do not actually exist. Often imitating a brand that does exist, they will copy the product pictures, logo and brand name in order to seem as real as possible. However, the difference is that the customer will never receive the products they ordered and spent their money on. This not only harms the customer’s trust but also the brand name that is being used.

Tell-tale Signs of a Scam

There are a few tell-tale signs of a scam. Spreading the knowledge of these may help your customers remain safe:

1. The product’s price is cheaper than other products within the category or heavily discounted. If the price or deal sounds too good to be true, it often is.
2. There is a sense of urgency to quickly complete the purchase in order to take advantage of a deal or special price.?
3. The method of payment is unusual or does not use an online platform’s secure payment. For instance, scammers will often ask for bank transfers.
4. The website or company that you are being urged to purchase from was only recently launched.
5. The email address the company uses does not sound official or does not match the one on the website.

During this time of year, many of these signs might not be as clear in the midst of the buying frenzy that often occurs in conjunction with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Many legitimate brands will offer huge sales and urge their customers to purchase before the deal runs out. However, looking out for the website's legitimacy, whether there are safe payment options, checking the email address the deal has come from are good ways of deciphering which offers are scams and which are legitimate. Since it is so easy for scammers to convince customers that their offers are real at this time of year, it’s important that we do what we can to protect our brand from copycats and, in turn, protect our customers from falling for these scams.?

Luckily, SnapDragon has a solution for this issue. We are able to search for and take down online fakes that are attempting to copy your brand. That way, you can rest assured that your customers are not being tricked at a time when they are perhaps at their most vulnerable.?

Call in the experts

SnapDragon is an online brand protection company dedicated to fighting fakes online. Using clients’ intellectual property rights, Swoop, our AI -driven software, monitors the world’s busiest online marketplaces, domains and social media for copycat goods, identifying suspect infringements for removal. Our team of multilingual brand analysts ensure that counterfeiters can be defeated; protecting innovators, businesses and customers alike.

Get in touch today and we will perform a free, no-obligation demo where we will show you where you have a problem online, and how to fight back against the fakes. Or, if you’d simply rather have a quick chat with an expert, book an appointment here.

What’s more, we are currently running our own Black Friday promotion – sign up before the end of the year and you will get 10% off a whole year of monitoring*.

*Terms apply