Beware of Valentine’s Day scams
Posted February 11, 2012 2:38 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity for scammers to rip off those looking for love, unfortunately, most of the problems are online.
A romance scam is someone targeting people using dating websites. Armed with a fake profile, they convince the soon-to-be victim to send them money so they can visit. But they never show up.
Mark Fernandes with the Better Business Bureau says some online florists are also causing problems.
“They’re not providing the flowers as promised. Basically, people are spending money, they’re not getting what they were promised or it’s getting delivered late.”
The last scam is a phishing email disguised as an e-card, but when you have to download the latest version of software, you end up with a lovely virus.
“These ones are often times not actually from your friends, they’re from scammers that are trying to get you to click on links and it installs a virus. The other variations we’re seeing is that it’s going to social media where people can supposedly install an application to get a Valentine’s Day theme to the profile, which is not actually possible. But if you click on the app then in the end you install a malware virus onto your computer.”
More tips to avoid scams can be found here.
