Instagram Scams: Tips to Avoid Buying from Fraudulent Stores

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Instagram is a source of inspiration and an excellent search engine for finding little-known, local, and unique brands. However, all that glitters is not gold, and we often find, camouflaged in our feeds, ads for fraudulent stores that grab our attention by offering deep discounts on products from well-known brands.

How do they camouflage themselves?
They often "sneak" into our feed through advertising, so they blend seamlessly with the rest of the photos of the people or brands we follow and with the rest of the advertising from real stores. We understand real stores as professional stores with policies and standards in place.

Typically, this advertising paraguay mobile database directs us to a website with a multitude of products and a more than adequate interface. This is why we often trust them and fall into this trap.

Why on Instagram?
First, because it's one of the social networks with the greatest business potential, and second, because of its ability to personalize advertising. That's right, audience segmentation allows these cybercriminals to choose the target population they're most interested in based on their tastes or favorite brands. Thanks to targeted advertising, they reach a small number of people, resulting in minimal investment. Therefore, if they've done the segmentation correctly, they're almost guaranteed to get scammed.

How do we know it's a scam?
There are several ways to ensure that we are facing a fraudulent store:

Big discounts: If we see big deals on brand-name products, we should be suspicious. No brand will, for example, reduce a €300 handbag to €30. It's basically a way to get our attention.
Unprofessional ads: Professional brands often take great care with their corporate image. These types of ads fail to do so, and the fonts or colors are likely to differ from the original branding.
If we're still not entirely sure, we can verify that it's a fake store by visiting the website the ad links to. In this case, there are several other indicators that indicate we're dealing with a scam:

Lack of an SSL security certificate: Any professional e-commerce site will have its addresses under the https protocol, and a padlock will appear next to the URL.
Lack of company information: Real e-commerce sites include company and contact information on their websites. When this information is vague or completely missing, we should be suspicious. All e-commerce sites should include contact information on their websites to resolve any issues that arise with customers.
They have no reviews online: A lack of reviews online is another indicator that we may be dealing with a scam.
There is no return policy, privacy policy, or legal notice: Or if such sections do exist, they are poorly translated and use inappropriate language.