The most prestigious game in European club football is set to take place this Saturday and scammers will be on the prowl looking to take advantage of football fans.
In South Africa, with options being limited and the lack of viewing competition, many fans will be trawling the internet looking for pirated streams of the match.
Scammers understand this and use the match to create phishing platforms for streaming.
One of the most common ways criminals trick victims is asking for personal details and to make a payment to watch an illegal stream.
Examples below show that fans are asked to put in personal data as the first step to register for access to match streaming.
After registering, they will also be asked to put in their bank details to verify their bank card.
Such “unknown” services should be considered suspicious, especially if they promise a “free service”, but later, during the registration process, ask people to provide bank details and other personal information.
In South Africa, the only two legitimate services that will be streaming the match will be MultiChoice’s DStv and Showmax.
Fake tickets for the final
Given the huge popularity of the Champions League and the number of fans around the world, it’s easy to imagine the huge hype generated around the purchase of tickets for the final.
Obviously, not everyone will manage to get tickets.
The Stade de France, which will host the final, has a capacity of only 80 000 spectators.
Because of the limited number of available places in comparison to the amount of football fans, scammers are actively selling fake tickets.
Examples of such scams are shown below:
Screenshots show that third-party prices are pretty high – from £1 200 (about R24 000) to £7 350 (about R146 000).
Fans, therefore, need to be extremely vigilant and carefully study the site that they’re going to purchase tickets from.
To avoid becoming victim to a scam, the safest option is to buy tickets on official Uefa websites.
Kaspersky, the global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, shared the following tips on how to avoid scams on the internet:
- Check any link before clicking. Hover over it to preview the URL and look for misspellings or other irregularities. It’s also good practice to only enter a username and password over a secure connection. Look for the Https prefix before the site URL, indicating the connection to the site is secure.
- Sometimes fake e-mails and websites look just like real ones. It depends on how well the criminals did their homework. In particular, the hyperlinks will, most likely, be incorrect – with spelling mistakes. However, the links can also be disguised to look like valid links and redirect you to a different page, impersonating the legitimate site.
- To protect your data and finances, it is good practice to make sure the online checkout and payment page is secure. You’ll know it if the web page’s URL begins with Https instead of the usual Http; an icon of a lock will also typically appear beside the URL and the address bar in some browsers will be green. If you don’t see these features, do not proceed.
- Use a trusted security solution that can help you check the security of the URL that you’re visiting and also provides the ability to open any site in a protected container to prevent theft of sensitive data, including financial details.
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