Ace Hardware is a large, popular hardware store and like many stores has a loyalty program called Ace Rewards.  Ace recently sent out a warning to its Ace Rewards members that scammers, posing as Ace Hardware are sending emails to Ace Reward members offering a prize for completing a survey.  In order to receive your prize, you are required to pay a small fee to cover shipping and handling.  The scammers are also sending emails in which they direct the targeted victim to a fake website that appears to be that of Ace Hardware.  Unfortunately, if you take the survey and provide your credit card or debit card to pay for the shipping and handling of your prize, the only thing you will receive will be excessive charges on your credit or debit card.  If you to the phony website, you may end up unwittingly downloading malware or providing personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft.

TIPS

Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.  The email address from which the phony email is sent may look legitimate, but the easy way to avoid the problem is to merely go to the actual website of Ace Hardware which is http://www.acehardware.com.  Any promotion or sale will always be available on Ace’s website.

It is always better not to click on a link in an email to go to a website, but rather type in the URL that you know is legitimate.  However, you may want to go the extra step and actually do a search to determine who owns the website you are on.  There are a number of ways of doing this.  One of the easiest is to go to ICANN and enter the domain name and click on “lookup.”  This will enable you to find out who actually owns the website.  So for instance, if you think you are going to the Ace Hardware website and the website you are on is owned by someone in Nigeria, you can be pretty confident it is a scam.  Here is the link to ICANN  https://lookup.icann.org/

Also, Ace Hardware, like most legitimate companies will never ask for payment information or passwords as a part of any survey.

Finally, as always, you should never use your debit card when buying anything online (or at a brick and mortar store as well) because federal laws protecting you from liability for fraudulent purposes are far stronger for credit card purchases than debit card purchases.

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