Las phishing scams They are some of the worst, as they add credibility by taking advantage of certain trust marks that cybercriminals pose as. One of the latest reported cases is Shein, who is seeing how her brand is used for a massive scam.
E-commerce specialized in fashion is seeing how hundreds of users are being victims of a scam for which they lose 66 euros per month.
Scam impersonating Shein
In recent times, a scam has been taking place on Instagram in which the name of the Shein brand, an e-commerce specialized in fashion, is used to steal money from victims through supposed gift card prizes. This scam has been targeted at victims from several countries, including Spainthe United Kingdom, Australia, France and Poland.
The modus operandi implies that a person receives a comment on one of their publications informing them that they have won a Shein gift card worth 500 euros. The prize is quite attractive, which usually lowers our defenses and they take advantage of it to end up losing money.
After making the partridge dizzy for a while with games of correct answers and choosing prize boxes, they will inform us again of the amount of our gift card and the next steps. After the communication of the false prize, the user is guided through a series of steps in which he is supposedly redeeming his gift and simply must pay 2 euros. Although this would already be suspicious, what the supposed winner does not know is that the payment data is really being used to subscribe with a price of 33 euros every 14 days.
Avast has reported this scam
Avast threat researchers are the ones who have reported the fake account to Instagram and in turn they have warned the Shein brand of the use of their name for these illegal activities.
The advice they have for users is to stay away from dubious quizzes and “prizes” they have supposedly won, as well as check if the account they contact for these sweet prizes is a genuine account or a fake account, which they often look similar, but slight differences can be noted.
New scams similar to this one are popping up all the time on social media, but there are several easy ways to avoid them. In addition to being mindful, they also suggest that you have your devices protected with antivirus protection so that it alerts you in case you end up on a fraudulent page like the one shown above.
