Warning over Black Friday texts hijacked by fraudsters

THIS year’s Black Friday shopping bonanza is set to be the most fraudulent on record as criminals take advantage of retailers bombarding consumers with 40 million texts.

Action Fraud is today warning shoppers to avoid clicking links in shopping-related SMS and Whatsapp messages, over fears that criminals are jumping on a boom in legitimate “special offer” texts to steal people’s details.

Shoppers will receive twice as many text messages as last year notifying them of special offers in store, with the total number rising from 25 million over last year’s Christmas period to 40million this year, according to bulk text message provider Infobip.

This year shops like AO and L’occitaine are sending texts instead of email offers. This is due to a rise in phone shopping, and that consumers are more likely to open texts.

According to Infobip, 95 per cent of text recipients open links, compared with 23 per cent of email recipients. Barclays has identified texts as the fastest rising communication method being hijacked to steal money. Barclays is also warning that Christmas 2017 will be the UK’S most fraudulent ever for online shoppers.

Ross Martin, the head of Barclays’s cyber digital eagles team, said scam texts were so convincing that even policemen had fallen for them. He added that recipients click on 50 per cent of links in scam text messages, which is enough for criminals to install spywear on the devices.