As the biggest sales event of the year looms, online crooks are starting to target eager consumers looking to save big on Black Friday. Every year during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, scammers and identity thieves take advantage of the shopping frenzy by pumping out email-based schemes designed to trick buyers out of their money and personal information. Unfortunately, this shopping season is no exception.
Researchers at Bitdefender Antispam Lab have been on the hunt these past weeks for new custom scams threatening consumers’ wallets on Black Friday.
Although bespoke emails were sparse between October 26 and November 6, the rate of unsolicited Black Friday emails peaked on November 9, when 26% of all Black Friday-related correspondence (during the October 26 – November 9 timeline) was delivered to consumers, according to Bitdefender Antispam researchers.
According to Bitdefender telemetry, the researchers found shoppers received 27% of all Black Friday spam emails (by volume) in the US, and 24% reached users in Ireland.
They also found 49% of all Black Friday-related spam (by volume) was sent from IP addresses in the US, 16% from Germany, 13% from Bulgaria and 5% in France.
Whereas 56% of all Black Friday spam (by volume) received between October 26 and November 9 was marked as a scam.
Subject lines of Black Friday-themed spam range from huge discounts on designer bags and sunglasses to traditional marketing ads and giveaway scams.
Some examples…
