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The other day, I saw a post in one of my small business groups – “What's a way that I can make a lot of money without much effort?” Where there is a way to make money, there will always be people who will take advantage, making easy money by scamming people. And, amazingly, it’s easier to scam people online, especially during the holidays. This surprises me because I don’t trust strangers online so when someone I don’t know contacts me with an amazing business opportunity, I immediately block them – not today, Satan.
So, yeah, I have trust issues. I'm not alone, am I? One of the reasons why the pet industry is so profitable is because pet parents have big hearts. Show me a picture of a dog in need and I'm reaching for my wallet or looking for the PayPal link. I've been burned in the past and I've learned to be careful.
But not everyone is cut from the same cloth and every year I see people get taken by these scams that have been around for years. So I decided to write about the top five that I hear about in an effort to help others avoid being taken.
1 – Secret Sister Gift Online Scam
This scam has been around for years and I’ve been invited to join in a few times. I ignored the invites because it seems kind of like a pyramid scheme and I am NOT a fan of MLMs.
Welcome to our secret sister gift exchange! Here’s how it works:
1) Send one gift value at least $10 to secret sister #1 below.
2) Remove secret sister’s name from #1; then move secret sister #2 to that spot.
3) Add your name to #2 with your info.
4) Then send this info to 6 other ladies with the updated name info
5) Copy the secret sister request that I posted on my wall, to your own wall. If you cannot complete this within 1 week please notify me, as it isn’t fair to the ladies who have participated and are waiting for their own gifts to arrive. You might want to order directly from a web-based service (Amazon, or any other online shop) which saves a trip to the post office. Soon you should receive 36 gifts! What a deal, 36 gifts for giving just one! Be sure to include some information about yourself … some of your favorites. Seldom does anyone drop out because it’s so much fun to send a gift to someone you may or may not know … and of course it’s fun to receive. You should begin receiving gifts in about 2 weeks if you get your letters out to your 6 people right away.
Source: Snopes
Sounds easy and fun, right? And, of course, we’ll add our friends to the list to make sure they get a gift too. If you’re one of the first to join the chain, you might get a few gifts. The issue is that not everyone will participate.
If we’re getting a gift, I gather that they want our name, address, maybe a phone number (for the shipping company). Granted, a lot of our personal information is readily available online (especially when you’re a pet blogger), but it’s much easier to have women readily offer their address along with “some information about yourself” to help others choose a gift for you.
The temptation of 36 gifts has people joining in without looking deeply into this “opportunity.” But this is a chain letter, something that is illegal when money (or a gift?) is requested. And even if this scam is able to skate by the law and individuals are willing to lose $10 in case this is the real deal, what about our six friends? Why drag others into it? And, does anyone actually know someone who got 36 gifts?
This scam has been reported to the Better Business Bureau – wow – and they stress that it’s not worth breaking the law to test this scam out. Instead, we should report it to the US Postal Inspection Services, report it to the social media platform through which the message was delivered, remind yourself that giving personal information to strangers isn’t a good idea, and anything that looks too good to be true (which is often reflected by pyramid schemes) usually is – dig deeper before responding and you’ll find loads of articles warning against this scam.
Most recently, I saw a similar scam that is targeting pet parents. In this one, you send toys instead of a random $10 gift.
2 – Phony Charities
In 2020, a large political (aka Marxist) organization got the country all worked up and people raced to their online banking to donate millions of dollars to prove that they are good people. Sadly, everyone was donating money to an organization that is NOT a charity. So, where did all that money go? Certainly not to the people the organization claims to speak for and protect. So, in my opinion, it was all a big scam, but it didn’t end there. Opportunists saw how quickly people were willing to donate money to organizations to prove that they were good people so fake sites were created that earned millions of dollars.
Before you donate your hard-earned money to any organization or charity, take a moment and find out where your money goes. Even if it’s a pet organization. As a pet blogger, people reach out to me all the time for donations. Last year, someone threatened to kill themselves if I didn't promote their Go Fund Me on my social media pages.
A rule for myself is that I only donate to two organizations:
- Save-a-Mutt, a local rescue organization that is doing amazing work for dogs and cats
- Planet Paws, an organization that seeks to educate pet parents about how to raise healthier dogs and cats while promoting the study of fresh food diets (and other natural choices) for our pets.
3 – PayPal Friends and Family Payment Option
Okay, so this isn’t a scam, but scammers include this in their communication with targets. If this were legit and I were, for example, sending money to my stepson, I would use the Family and Friends option so that he didn’t get charged for the money. However, one thing I didn’t know about this option is that you can’t get a refund – PayPal Buyer Protection doesn’t cover the Friends and Family option because we’re not supposed to be using this option to pay for goods and services. If someone asks you to use this option, refuse and walk (click) away because once you realize that you've been scammed, PayPal can't help you.
4 – Holiday E-Card Online Scams
Someone you may or may not know will send you a message via email or Facebook messenger with a link to an e-card. I started getting these several years ago and the person sending it was either a stranger or someone I never communicate with – so why are they sending me a holiday e-card? We’ve been warned so many times about clicking links that I usually ignore and delete the message. If it’s someone I do know and communicate with, I tell them that I don’t click on unknown links.
By the way, did you know that I can fake a link? So even if a link says “www.hallmark.com,” hover over the link with your mouse to see if that’s where it’s really taking you. And double check the spelling on website links – sometimes they’ll drop or add a letter and in our haste to get through our emails, we’ll get duped.
Clicking on these unknown links can result in malicious software being downloaded to your computer without your knowledge. And, anyway, does anyone send e-cards anymore? Receiving one should be your first red flag.
5 – Fake Websites
And, finally, people will make fake websites to lure you in. The websites look exactly like the original site with some minor differences and they can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars before getting shut down. This happened to me and someone discovered it by happenstance and let me know. I was able to get the site shut down within a couple of hours, but it’s scary how easy it was for someone to clone my website, swap out my affiliate links (how I earn money) for their own, and slap on their own advertising platform.
Shop through websites that you trust and if you notice anything that doesn’t look right, don’t hesitate to reach out to the website owner because doing so can save them and others from being scammed.
How to Avoid Online Scams Targeting Pet Parents
No one wants to Bahhh Humbug throughout the holiday season by questioning the motives of others and shedding lights on scams by tossing Snopes links within social media discussions. But, sadly, because there are so many scumbags in the world, many of us are donning the cap of Ebenezer Scrooge or The Grinch to protect ourselves and others.
Here are a few tips to help you avoid scams targeting pet parents.
1 – Stranger Danger – if it's someone you don't know (or don't know well), then ignore the message. I go one step further and block the person from messaging me in the future.
2 – Looks Too Good to be True – promises of buckets of money, big cash prizes, or other things that don't happen every day may be too good to be true. I've found that nothing comes for free – look for the price tag before sharing your personal information.
3 – Asking for Personal Information – speaking of personal information, sharing our address, phone number, or banking information is a bad idea. Like I said earlier, a lot of this stuff is online for anyone who is desperate to find it, don't make it easy for strangers by handing the information over.
4 – Pressuring You to Give – sob stories about dogs are the worst and it can be tempting to fall for someone's sad tale about a box of puppies that are going to be euthanized unless you give them $500 to help rescue them from the shelter. Yeah, that's a really one. The pressure can be a countdown clock, threats to harm oneself or an animal, or just a steady stream of messages – if you feel pressure, then walk away.
5 – Playing on Your Heart Strings – and, finally, scammers out there know how much we love animals and will play on our heart strings to get into our wallet.
2020 has been a rough year for everyone and small businesses are closing in record numbers and we’re supposedly heading into an economic crisis. The sad part of times like these is that the doors fly open to scammers who promise stimulus checks, early tax refunds, and more. Thinking they’re helping the less fortunate, people are taken in by fake charities. Wanting to connect and have fun, people are scammed by pyramid schemes. Be careful. Protect your money and your information.
