Cork Safety Alerts

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SCAM ALERT: Branded Warehouse Clothing Sale

ByCork Safety Alerts

Mar 20, 2016

PUBLIC ALERT: Social Media Phishing Scam

It has come to our attention that a another information collection / phishing – social media event page is currently circulating in Cork with the title “Branded Warehouse Clothing Sale – Cork”


There is a number of these events currently circulating in the UK and similar events setup in Ireland. The scams are known for data harvesting by collection on a web form.

The information they are requesting is: Full Name, Email Address, Mobile Number and University of Choice. All information which can all be used for marketing purposes.

We’re wondering, why ask which university you want to attend? This is a “clothing sale.”

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Each of these events listed gain quite a lot of attention, seen above from the Cork “Sale” it has 3.5K interested parties, with 1,300 registered as “going” to the sale.

The event which requires you to sign up for details, collects personal data via a web form sending your details right back to the creator of the scam. These types of scams are known for “data harvesting” for marketing companies and chances are your information is being sold off to marketing agencies.

They seem to be setup for a number of Irish cities including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. The Dublin event itself raising the interest of 9,800 people! Furthermore, there are over 20 UK cities listed on their Facebook page.

We’ve discovered that by clicking “Interested” it may give the organisers of this event access to view information on your Facebook profile.

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The below is what the web form looks like, if you click on the link:

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Since posting this yesterday, we have been in touch with TypeForm the company used to create the form to collect the data on this site. We reported the form as a scam and the company have now deleted the form and suspended the account – success! This stops anyone from further providing their information to these scam artists. Please remember to click “Uninterested / Not Going” to these events to stop them from becoming popular.
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If something seems to good to be true, it probably is! Some pointers on these Facebook event scams:
 
⇥ Facebook Event Scams are used to generate likes and interest. Further down the line, the page may be sold to a company or the name of the event changed to something else to keep the interest up so the page can be used for advertising / marketing.
 
⇥ Your personal details are sold by the creators of the scam to marketing companies, who can use these details for advertising and marketing campaigns.
 
⇥ If you see an event with a set date, but no venue then it’s more than likely a hoax.
 
⇥ Any company hosting an event will display some, if not all of the following: Company Registration Number, VAT Number, Official Address, Phone numbers. Any company / event that doesn’t have these listed are more than likely scams.

 

⇥ Check to see if similar events are setup around Ireland and the UK, usually these Social Media scams have multiple cities listed with dates very close to each other for the same event.

 

This sale has already been debunked as a hoax on UK site Thats Non-Sense.

Remember DO NOT click on any links provided by these social media events. DO NOT submit any personal information on a web form unless you are 100% sure of who you are sending the information to.

What do I do if I have already sent my information?

  1. If any credit or debit card information has been sent, call your issuing financial institution and have them cancel the card immediately.
  2. If a password has been submitted, immediately change any other passwords to other online services which may be similar to the one used in the phishing scam.
  3. Ensure your anti-virus software is up to date so that any further phishing websites are brought to your attention before you submit your information.

If in doubt, check it out! Contact Cork Safety Alerts and we can have one of our administrators do some digging / investigating first.

By Cork Safety Alerts

Administrator of Cork Safety Alerts.