Too Good To Be True…

How I Almost Fell For A Scam because of A Shoe Sale.

Shoes – on sale? It always comes down to shoes, doesn’t it?

I was taking a break from working just now and scrolling through facebook when I saw an ad from one of my favorite shoe companies – Vivobarefoot. The real link is here – vivobarefoot.com.

I love being barefoot but the next best thing is wearing my vivos.

So when I saw that they were having an 80% off sale, I didn’t think twice, I just clicked.

And it took me to a website that looked close enough. I knew VivoBarefoot started in the UK so maybe I thought I was looking at one of their foreign-based sites. I continued browsing and was absolutely amazed that I could get three pairs of shoes for the price of one.

🚩 Red flag number zero.

What kind of crazy sale was this?

Then it dawned on me. This WAS crazy.

🚩 Red flag number one.

So I checked the URL. It wasn’t the normal vivobarefoot.com but a close looking store-vivobarefoot.com.

🚩 Red flag number two.

Then I tried to login with my customer account but it didn’t remember it.

🚩 Red flag number three.

I went to whois.com to look up the domain name and see if it checked out. Needless to say it did not.

I compared the data from the two different URLs.

The real website where I had an account was registered in the US and had been registered for as long as the company was around.

The fake website was registered just last month… in Afghanistan.

BLUF: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t risk your hard earned money for a good shoe deal!