University of Portsmouth expert warns of fraud dangers this Black Friday
Black Friday's set to see lots of offers, an expert's giving advice on how to keep safe online
As Black Friday sales hit stores today, a University of Portsmouth cybercrime expert's warning us of the dangers.
Dr Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, Associate Professor in Cybercrime and Cybersecurity at the University of Portsmouth, says to double check offers and website URLs, especially ads through social media.
He says Black Friday is a "characteristic" day for fraudsters.
He said: "It's very common for various different offers to come out from fraudsters, and they can be advertised on social media, emailed to people, they utilise all sorts of platforms.
"Black Friday is one of these very characteristic days where you're bound to get a lot of ads bombarding you from very legitimate sources, as well, and that makes it ideal for the fraudsters.
"It's very hard for people when they're getting all these different offers across the day, to spot the one that is not a legitimate offer.
"It's very likely that you'll get an offer that looks too good to be true, and you can normally avoid it, but the reality is that the whole concept of Black Friday is that you're going to get some offers that would normally seem too good to be true.
"The fraudsters know this and they know people are waiting for Black Friday in order to get this too good to be true offer and purchase something they might be interested in."
Dr Karagiannopoulos is sharing his advice for how to stay safe online.
He said: "The advice in terms of prevention is to really try to double check any kind of great offers that you might be getting.
"Perhaps something on social media as an advert, you can go to the website of the legitimate company and check if the offer exists on there, or whether a fraudster has created a very similar web page in order to trick people into thinking they're interacting with a legitimate business."
Other advice included checking the URL of websites and ensuring the name of the website is legitimate.
He added it's very important to report any scams and frauds, and not to feel ashamed if they do happen because "everyone can be victimised".