A new scam is tricking active online shoppers into paying for shipments of goods they didn’t order, We the Consumers platform has warned.
The scheme works as follows: a courier arrives at the address with a cash on delivery package without the “View and test” option. The consumer, who has previously ordered several items online, picks up the package after seeing his three names, address and phone number on it and pays. He later found out that this was not the product he had ordered at all.
“This approach looks like a very well thought out scheme that is expected to work. It is most likely a case of illegal processing of personal data, with the potential victims being active online shoppers awaiting shipments. Therefore, it is less likely that they will doubt when receiving a delivery notification,” commented Gabriela Rumenova from “We, the consumers” to BNR.
She told about an aggrieved consumer from Varna who paid nearly BGN 100 for a product he did not order.
“Last week I ordered a lot of things online. On Monday, a courier arrived at my work address and said, “You don’t have a review turned on.” But the package had my names, my jersey and my phone on it. I paid and immediately opened the package. It turned out to be a children’s shirt made of ugly material. I immediately called the courier back, but he said there was nothing he could do, the money had been transferred,” the alert reads.
Only after he realized that he was a victim of fraud, the user carefully examined the package – it had a logo of an unknown courier company, and the sender had an address in Hungary, and the package had previously gone through a courier in Romania.
The victim filed a complaint with the police, but so far there has been no response.
The advice of “We, the users” is in such cases to actually inform the law enforcement authorities, but before that, do not rush to accept such shipments and pay for them, but carefully examine who the sender is and whether this is the goods we expected.
It is also a good idea to contact the Personal Data Protection Commission in case of misuse of our personal data in order to find out how this may have happened. “When reaching the party processing them without our consent, we must request that our personal data be deleted,” says Gabriela Rumenova.
Be careful when shopping online, too, she advises. You need to make sure that you are on the original online platform, because very often windows open that take us to other pages and we enter personal data where we should not.
Another tip from “We the Consumers”: always choose merchants that provide the option to verify what is ordered before payment is made.
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