Feel like you’re seeing a lot more scams lately? Chances are, you’re probably right. Lately, there have been all kinds of reports about an unprecedented amount of scam attempts, largely driven by the wide adoption of generative AI. Worse, these scams tend to be a lot more sophisticated than the good old days of Nigerian princes.
What kinds of things should you be looking for to tell if something is a scam? How should you react if you’re just not sure?
In this post, we’re going to show you a couple of real-life examples we’ve run into recently and offer suggestions on what you can do.
Respond Or We’ll Close Down Your Website
At first glance, it’s easy to see why someone might take this at face value and worry that they need to respond. The email is written fairly well, and conveys a seemingly believable issue. It has a tone that conveys urgency, but still manages to stay professional.
However, if you look a bit closer, there are red flags. Here are just a few of the more glaring ones:
- WooCommerce vs Woocommerce. The company name is written as so: WooCommerce. This is written correctly in the signature, but not in the email subject, where the “c” isn’t capitalized: Woocommerce. While this may seem like a small thing, you can generally expect actual company representatives to write the name of the business correctly.
- @woocommerce.com vs @gmail.com. While there’s a tiny chance that someone writing a quick subject line at WooCommerce might incorrectly type the company name, the email domain isn’t something that can be explained away by a simple mistake. And if you look carefully, this email came from woocommercemerchantassistance@gmail.com
One, even most small businesses use emails that contain their own domain. If you have a website, there’s no reason not to do this, because it’s incredibly inexpensive and well worth the level of professionalism it affords. Two, this is a well-known scammer tactic. They create an email that sounds similar to the real one and use it to scam people. An even more sophisticated trick is to purchase a similar domain, such as businessname.net or businessnamesupport.com and email from there. Bottom line: always check where the email is coming from.
Your Facebook Page Is in Violation
The following message came to a different client’s Facebook page about a week later:
This message has a couple of potential capitalization issues that are telling – “support team” in the signature and “page” for Facebook Page are oddly lowercase – and the whole copyright symbol, “Noreply Facebook Meta Platform, Inc…” part is just written strangely. The link, too, is an unusual one.
More than anything, though, it just seems hard to believe that Facebook would send a single message – and then only to the business’s Facebook Page – for something as important as removing the page.
Your Go-To Way to Deal with Any Possible Scam
Luckily, if you ever receive a message like this from a company – or, really, any message where that business is requesting that you contact them or give them information – there is one surefire way to tell if it is real: Google the company, then contact their customer support.
Let’s put that in a step-by-step manner:
- You receive a message you think might be a scam.
- You absolutely do not – ever – reply to that message.
- Instead, you head over to the official contact page and use the information there to get in touch.
This is the 100 percent guaranteed way to confirm whether or not a message is real and what to do about it, but there are other options. The Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker both maintains a list of scams you can search and allows people to report new ones. Website checkers and Google’s Safe Browsing technology are both designed to help you determine if going to a site is safe or not. And reverse phone number lookup services enable you to check numbers to see if they are associated with known scams.
But the biggest thing to remember is that you should stop and think before replying if a company ever reaches out to you. And never offer personal information unless you are the one initiating the contact.
Also, you can see from the examples above, our clients are always welcome to reach out to us if they receive confusing or distressing correspondence and they aren’t sure whether or not it’s legitimate.
