Scam Alert: Fake Coupons

Coupon scams work because a discount lowers your guard. The offer is the bait; the goal is your money, your card details or your account. Here is what the common ones look like and how to check an offer in under a minute.

Common types of coupon scam

• Fake checkout pages. A convincing copy of a real store, built to capture your card details.
• Social media giveaways. A “voucher” posted from an account impersonating a well-known brand.
• Phishing emails and texts. A discount link that leads to a login page designed to harvest your password.
• Share-to-unlock. You must forward the offer to friends before you can claim it. The offer never arrives.
• Malicious apps and extensions. A “coupon finder” that reads everything you do in your browser.
• Subscription traps. A free trial to claim a discount, with a recurring charge buried in the terms.
• Lookalike domains. A single changed or added character in a familiar web address.
• Survey and prize scams. A questionnaire that ends by asking for personal or payment details.

Warning signs

• A discount far beyond anything the brand has ever run – 80 or 90 per cent off.
• A coupon worth roughly as much as the product itself.
• A misspelled address, or a page without HTTPS.
• The offer appears nowhere on the brand’s official site.
• A request for your card PIN, bank login or national insurance or social security number.
• Any fee to receive or unlock the coupon.
• No expiry date and no terms at all.
• Countdown timers and “only 2 left” pressure on a page you reached from an ad.

Verify an offer in under a minute

1. Open the retailer’s site by typing the address yourself – do not click through from the offer.
2. Find their own coupons or offers page and see whether the deal exists there.
3. Read the terms: Expiry, minimum spend, exclusions.
4. At checkout, confirm the address is the real domain and the connection is HTTPS.
5. Search the offer name together with the word “scam” and see what comes back.

Protecting yourself

• Pay by credit card where you can – it gives you a route to dispute a charge.
• Never install a browser extension you have not heard of to “find deals”.
• Use a different password on every store account, and turn on two-factor authentication.
• Prefer the brand’s own newsletter over a forwarded offer.

If you have been caught

1. Close the page and do not enter anything else.
2. Change the password on any account you used there, and anywhere you reused it.
3. Call your bank or card issuer if you entered payment details.
4. Run a malware scan if you installed anything.
5. Keep screenshots and the exact web address – you will need them to report it.

Where to report it

Which body to contact depends on where you live, and the wrong one cannot act. These are the official routes for the countries most of our readers are in – anywhere else, start with your national consumer protection or cybercrime agency.

• United States – the Federal Trade Commission at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Where money was taken or an account was broken into, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov takes those too.
• United Kingdom – Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk, which covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland instead – call 101, or 999 if it is in progress.
• Canada – the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca.
• Australia – Scamwatch, run by the ACCC’s National Anti-Scam Centre, at scamwatch.gov.au.
• EU, Norway and Iceland – the European Consumer Centres Network at eccnet.eu, for a purchase made across a border inside the EU or EEA. It will hand you to the centre for your own country.

It is also worth telling the brand being impersonated and the platform hosting the post, since both can have it taken down.