UK consumers most likely to suffer online scams

Friday, November 17, 2017 - 11:22 by Simon Crisp

Brits are more likely to have fallen victim to a phishing site on multiple occasions than those in the US, a study from DomainTools has found.

Around a fifth of the people from the UK questioned in the study admitted that they had interacted with a link which led them to a site designed to steal their personal information, compared with 38 per cent of those from America. But just over half of the Brits who had been duped once said that the same thing had happened to them again, compared with only 13 per cent of US respondents in the same category.

This either suggests that people from the UK are simply more susceptible to the tactics of cybercriminals, or that there are greater efforts to target Britons who are trying to carry out  shopping online.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most commonly impersonated retail brands were those that have the biggest customer bases and presence on the market in the UK. This includes e-commerce giant, Amazon, and high street stalwart, Argos, meaning that consumers need to be on their guard when checking correspondence they receive that claims to be from these firms and their similarly prominent competitors.

Each year as Christmas approaches there is a spike in phishing activity, putting consumers at risk of encountering a scam, especially as Black Friday and Cyber Monday roll around. Security experts encourage vigilance and warn that it is important to stick with legitimate e-commerce sites in order to carry out safe shopping online.

Scam email campaigns can be especially effective and convincing, whether by claiming to offer deals which are too good to be true, or by tricking recipients with claims of refunds, order problems or other emergencies. So now is the time of year to keep abreast of scam trends to avoid succumbing to them.