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Health & Fitness

Scammers Target Mother's Day Shoppers With Gift 'Bargains,' BBB Advises

The BBB urges consumers to check out online sites offering Mother's Day bargains before entering a credit card number or placing an order.

With Mother's Day coming up Sunday, my inbox has been overrun with emails urging me to buy something for Mom, often at a discount.

Online shopping has become so common that most of us don't think twice about using a credit card to buy something from an online retailer. But thinking twice is really important, especially if you're buying something from an unfamiliar site. Scammers may offer bargain prices on gifts, but all they want is your credit card number, and they have no intention of fulfilling your order.

The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers to be especially careful if an email offers a gift at a price that appears too good to be true. Discounts of 50 percent or more are especially suspect.

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Check sites out at bbb. org. Our BBB Business Reviews can tell you whether a site has complaints and how they've been handled. Look for a BBB Accredited Business seal on the site and click on it to make sure the seal is legitimate. It should take you directly to the company's BBB Business Review.

You should also take a close look at the address on the email and the address bar of any links. If the address doesn't match the name of the company that is allegedly offering the deal, a scammer may have set up a lookalike site to trick you into divulging account numbers or other sensitive information. When you get to the page for entering a credit card number, the address should begin with https://, which indicates a secure site.

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The BBB has five tips to help you avoid these scams, commonly called phishing:

  1. Don’t trust unsolicited emails, even if they appear to be from familiar businesses or agencies.  If you’re concerned about the validity of an email, contact the business or agency directly by phone or through its website to ask about the offer.
  2. Don’t open any attachments in suspicious emails and don’t click on any links or give any personal information unless you are confident where it is going. If you have concerns, run your cursor over a link (but don’t click it) to determine if the actual link is the same as the one shown. 
  3. Delete any suspicious email from your inbox and from your trash or recycling folder.
  4. Don’t give your Social Security number, bank account number or any other personal information to unfamiliar persons contacting you by phone or by mail.
  5. Be wary of misspellings, poor English, lots of capital letters or other signs that the person or persons contacting you may not be legitimate.

For more BBB news, go to the BBB website or follow the BBB on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

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