Thursday, August 06, 2009

Warning - Scam targeting the bead community

Normally I don't pass these things on, but since I was almost a victim myself today, I thought I better say something. Especially since this scam is specifically targeting the beading and jewelry community!

There's a vendor out there called HHH Enterprises. Now, they are a perfectly legitmate vendor and I have bought from them in the past. Nothing wrong with them and, in fact, they are as much a victim of this scam as anyone else.

Today, in my e-mail box, I received a message saying it was a confirmation of my order with HHH. Now, I may be something of a ditzy blonde, but I KNOW I didn't place an order with them recently.

In the body of the e-mail (which was addressed to me by first and last name) there's a link that says "click here to cancel order." NORMALLY, I don't click on these things - being suspicious by nature, but I wanted to investigate completely as I suspected something was odd.

The link took me to a page which looks IDENTICAL to the regular HHH home page and all it wants is EVERY BIT OF MY PERSONAL INFORMATION INCLUDING CREDIT CARD # so they can "identify" my order and cancel it.

Needless to say, I did not provide the information. Here's the interesting part - when I closed that window and went to forward the bogus e-mail to HHH so I could report it to them - the e-mail disappeared. Thus leaving no proof to send to the vendor.

I went to the legitimate HHH website, got their phone number and called them. They are aware of the scam and are being unfairly hurt by it.

I hope everyone will spread the word on this - not only do I not want anyone else to get accidentally caught up in this, but I want to help preserve HHH's reputation.

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled viewing.

KJ

5 comments:

SueBeads said...

Thanks for letting us all know!

sharon said...

I had an exact similar experience with Paypal 2 months ago...email, acct#, and when I opened it it looked exactly like Paypal's page, but asked me for my social security#. I emailed it to paypal and it was a fraud but I had to change my entire acct. Thanks for sharing!

susanc said...

Wow. It never ceases to amaze me the depths some unscrupulous people will go to to scam others out of their money. Thank you for passing this information along.

TesoriTrovati said...

Egads! That is so scary! Thanks for spreading the word and for alerting the company to those dirty dealings.

Lisa, Designs by Isis said...

Gosh u have to be so careful these days ....!