Con Watch: Valentine’s Day Scams

Steve Weisman is a lawyer, college professor, author, and one of the country’s leading experts in cybersecurity, identity theft, and scams. See Steve’s other Con Watch articles.

Valentine’s Day is a very important day to many people — including identity thieves. The most common places for Valentine’s Day scams are florists, electronic greeting cards, deliveries, and online dating sites.

Florists

Scammers will send you an email or a text message posing as a florist with a great deal for last minute flowers at amazing prices. The product could also be something like jewelry. You merely have to click on a link or download an attachment. Unfortunately, this can download malware such as  keystroke logging malware that will, in turn, enable the scammer to steal personal information from your device and use it to make you a victim of identity theft.

Remember that you can never be confident if the person sending you the email is who they claim to be, particularly if the email contains a link or an attachment to download. Email addresses can appear legitimate when they are not, and text messages can be “spoofed” to make the text message appear to be coming from any telephone number the scammer wishes.

Always confirm the legitimacy of an email or text message before clicking on links or downloading attachments contained in an email or text message. Better yet, ignore the email and go directly to the website that the offer appears to come from.

Also, always try to use your credit card rather than a debit card because the law limits your liability for fraudulent use of your credit card. Debit cards, which are tied to your bank account, do not come with the same level of protection. If you do not report fraudulent use of your debit card immediately, you risk losing your entire bank account.

Never trust an online florist or other retailer that shows up in an online search until you have checked them out to make sure that they are genuine. Just because a website turns up high on the first page of a browser search does not mean it is legitimate. It only means that the scammer may be adept at manipulating the search engine’s algorithms to obtain a high placement or has paid to have the site listed prominently.

The first indication that you are shopping on a scammer’s website is the price looks too good to be true. Most of the time, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is a scam. Another indication is the site contains grammar and spelling mistakes; scams are often perpetrated by people whose primary language is not English.

A good place to evaluate a website selling retail goods is ResellerRatings.com, where you can find reviews about particular merchants. If they are not even listed there, they probably are a scam. You can also go to whois.com and find out who actually owns the website. For instance, while a website may appear to be that of a legitimate store such as Target, you may find that the particular website is registered to someone in Nigeria, which would be a good indication that it is a scam.

Electronic Greeting Cards

Electronic greeting cards are a great way to send a Valentine’s Day card at the last minute when you forget to get one ahead of time, but phony electronic greeting cards can be filled with malware.

Be skeptical of any online greeting card, particularly if it does not indicate who it’s from. legitimate e-cards will always tell you who sent the card. Bogus email cards will generally say something like “a secret admirer.”  Never open an e-card from a secret admirer. Even if you recognize the name of the sender, confirm that it was really sent from that person before you click on the link and open the card.

Deliveries

A common scam operating on Valentine’s day involves a delivery of a gift basket of wine and flowers, however the person delivering the gift basket requests a small payment — generally five dollars or less — as a delivery fee because alcohol is being delivered. They will only accept a credit card as payment. The scammer then takes down the information and runs up charges on your card.

There is no special delivery charge for alcohol, so if someone requires a payment for such a delivery, decline the gift.

Online Dating

Online dating scams are plentiful, with most revolving around scammers quickly professing true love for you and then asking for money.

Of course you should be wary of anyone who immediately indicates they are in love with you. Some telltale signs of an online romance scam include wanting to communicate with you right away outside of the dating site, claiming to be working abroad, not being willing to communicate through Zoom or some other video service, and poor grammar, which is often a sign of a foreign romance scammer. (Many romance scams originate in Eastern Europe.)

Love doesn’t come cheap, but this Valentine’s Day, make sure it’s not a scam that parts you from your money.