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MOSCOW, May 20/Prime. Fraudsters can hide behind discount coupons that come to the mail as an attachment — mailings from official companies usually do not contain additional files, an expert from the Center for Financial Literacy Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance of Russia Maria Solovichenko.
It is noted that mostly fraudulent schemes are associated with the theft of money through cashback. Phishing sites are created that look like the page of a well-known store or coupon aggregator, and if the user enters his card details there, they get to third parties. At the same time, links to such portals can be sent to the mail or, for example, pop up as a banner on a social network.
«Do not open attached files that allegedly contain promotional codes from the company. Mailing lists from official companies, as a rule, do not contain attached documents,» Solovichenko said.
The expert advised to check the presence of the «unsubscribe» button, since it must be present if the received offer is real, as well as the sender's address. «Large online stores always send letters only from their domain name. Fraudsters do not always successfully fake them. If you know the address of the store, and in the incoming message this address differs from the original (for example, it contains other characters), this is a fake indicator» she explained.
In addition, even using a real promotional code, you should remember some rules, says Solovychenko. So, it’s better to make a shopping list in advance, determine the budget for promotional shopping and transfer it to a separate card, and also study prices.
«Sometimes sellers lure shopaholics with promotions with impressive discounts — 70-80% of the original price. In fact, it may turn out that the product is either no longer available, or its price has been increased before the sale. To understand how real the discount is and how the price has changed for goods, use special price tracking services,» the expert concluded.