I first told you about “brushing”  in August  of 2020 after many people in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom reported receiving unordered packages of seeds sent from China.  A wide variety of conspiracy theories quickly surfaced to explain what was happening, but the truth was that it was an example of a scam called “brushing.”   Brushing was the name given to using false orders for products to boost the prominence of an online vendor.

Vendors pay brushers to make large orders of their product and ship them to strangers to make the sales appear to be legitimate.  The brushers follow up on these purchases by posting glowing reviews of the vendor’s product.  This combination of increased sales volume and positive reviews will, in turn, result in the increased prominence of the vendor in online marketplaces and result in increased sales.  Brushing is illegal in the United States and China, however, it is quite commonly used by Chinese companies.

Now we are seeing a resurgence of this scam, but in a more threatening manner.  While in the original brushing scam, people receiving the unordered items did not suffer any financial harm, now scammers are sending unordered goods, most often through Amazon to people with a QR code and instructions to scan the QR code in order to see who sent the goods. If you scan the QR code either you will be taken to a phony, but legitimate appearing website where you will be prompted to provide personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft or, even worse, merely by scanning the QR code you may download malware that will steal personal information from your phone that can lead to identity theft.

TIPS

If you get unordered goods with instructions to scan a QR code, report the package to Amazon using the form found at https://account-status.amazon.com/report-unwanted -packages.  Do not scan the QR code, As with the initial instances of the brushing scam, you are legally entitled to keep any unordered goods sent to you.

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