HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Maybe you think you can spot a scam. They’re all over the internet and in email and on social media sites.
Some are easy to spot, but many are dead-ringers for legitimate websites from reputable companies.
Lookalike websites with similar domains trick American shoppers into spending their money or giving away personal information. The software technology company Check Point recently discovered that over 5,300 different malicious shopping websites are found every week, a 178% increase over 2021.
It’s a successful strategy for cyber-criminals who are capable of building and releasing websites that are nearly impossible to spot as spoofs.
While browsing the newsfeed on Facebook the other night I ran across an ad for fitness equipment from the company Bowflex. Adjustable dumbbells for just $88 with free shipping. I know those dumbbells usually cost $300 so I was suspicious to see what happened when I clicked on the ad.
A click took me to a website that looked identical to the real Bowflex.com site but its URL or domain address was bowflex-us.com. If you’ve shopped online at some international companies, it is quite common for them to have a separate domain for customers in the U.S. So a “-us.com” isn’t a dead giveaway that it’s a spoofed site.
Inspecting the lookalike website closer revealed copyright at the bottom of the page which sent me searching for its homepage. Clicking it took me to the same home screen, which again, looked identical…
