It is only October 3rd but many people are preparing for Halloween.  Celebrating Halloween has become a major event in recent years with many adults searching for elaborate costumes and of course whenever many people are interested in something, scammers appear ready to take advantage of that interest.  Scammers have set up phony Halloween costume websites, often posing as legitimate costume websites.  Often the ads for their phony websites are posted on social media as well as appearing high in search engine searches because the scammers either purchase an advertisement in order to get a high position in a search engine search or because they are skilled enough to manipulate the algorithms the search engines use to obtain a high ranking.  Pictured below is one of the phony ads that has appeared in social media.  Anyone ordering online from one of these phony websites will end up providing their credit card to a scammer.

Halloween Scams 2024_social media ad scam

TIPS

The 90% discount in the advertisement pictured above should give you pause because generally anytime the price is too good to be true, it is a scam.  Also, whenever you order anything online you should use your credit card rather than your debit card because the protection you get from fraud when using your credit card is much greater than the protection you get when using your debit card.

Look at the URL.  If you are making a payment, you would want the URL to be preceded by https rather than merely http.  The “s” means that your communication is being encrypted and while even some phony websites may go the extra step and use encryption, most do not and so this is an easy way to spot a scam.
The Google Safe Browsing Transparency Report is a terrific free service where you can type in the URL and learn if Google’s research indicates it is a scam.  Here is a link to it. https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search
You can also use Whois.com which is a free service that will tell you who owns a particular URL and how long it has been in service.  If your Walmart website has only been around six months and is owned by someone in Nigeria, it certainly is a scam.  Here is a link to Whois  https://whois.domaintools.com/
Finally, look for reviews of the particular site and Google the name of it with the word “scam” and see what comes up.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link. https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/