Beware of Ray-Ban ads on Facebook.
Crooks are luring social network users to visit bogus Ray-Ban e-shops to buy ‘heavily discounted’ sunglasses, but their main intention is to steal their personal and payment information.
Sounding the alert, ESET, a company dealing in cybersecurity solutions, said the Facebook scam targets Chinese language users of the popular social networking website.
The company said in a media statement: “Spam ads, promoting fake Ray-Ban sunglasses with discounts as high as 90 per cent, are spread via hacked Facebook accounts that attackers have taken control of using malware and social engineering tactics. Subsequently, attackers post pictures and ads via individual Facebook accounts without the owner’s consent.
“Victims that fall for the scam and click on these ads are taken to fraudulent websites where they can make a purchase.”
Besides the possibility of losing money on counterfeit goods, the victims’ payment card details may also be at risk as the transactions run via bogus sites rather than secure payment portals.
This allows their credit card details to travel unencrypted across the Internet before being sent to the attacker’s server in plain text, thus allowing them to use these details in the future.
ESET said the fraudulent websites are available in different language mutations, notably Chinese and English. However, users in countries such as the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Chile, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom are also targeted.
Most of these fraudulent websites are also situated in China and use a similar design, according to ESET. Many of them are newly-created domains registered only this year, showing that the scam is still very prevalent, despite being around for a number of years.
More details about the scam, as well as ESET’s recommendations on how to avoid falling victim to it, can be found in an article on ESET’s official blog,WeLiveSecurity.com.
chenj@sph.com.sg
