By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post
Sometimes it seems like I see more ads than posts from my actual friends on Facebook. And god forbid I accidentally linger on any one ad too long, guarantee you I will see nothing but ads for that kind of thing for the next week straight (let’s not talk about that charcuterie board ad).
But did you know that some ads are not just annoying, but straight up scams that can steal your money or personal info, or maybe even infect your computer with a virus? Best thing you can do is ignore them!
I got an ad for this, looks kind of fun right, but doesn’t something seem a little … odd?
Sketchy Facebook ad. Courtesy image
Gentle reader, this page is for a dental clinic in Italy.
La Clinica Dentale
4.73 Google reviews
Address: Via Trieste, 79G, 25018 Montichiari BS, Italy
Phone: +39 030 996 2807
Province: Province of Brescia
Scammy page from Facebook. Courtesy image
Why on earth would a dentist in Italy be selling junky toys? Chances are this is an abandoned or stolen Facebook page that has been taken over by scammers.
Having a readily established page helps add legitimacy, although it does help if they change the page a little so that it’s not obviously a dentist’s page.
Scammy toy sales page from Facebook. Courtesy image
The link in the ad takes you to “radiinhealth[.]com” and when I did a domain name lookup on the page (domain lookups provide you with basic information about webpages, like owner, age of the page, country it is based out of, etc.) I found it is a Namecheap page, and was registered on: 2024-11-05 15:53:51 UTC. It is a fairly new page, which always sets off alarm bells for me.
Phishing and other scam sites are easy to spin up, and a new site is always a possible red flag. Namecheap has a reputation for hosting scammy pages, so that’s another mark down for the site.
Frankly, I would rather eat a festive portion of “ring around the tuna” than enter my personal and financial information into this site.
Vintage recipe for ‘ring around the tuna’. Courtesy image
Even if this isn’t an outright scam to steal your credit card or other info, I would bet they have sketchy business practices, like signing you up for difficult to cancel recurring charges, and the toy looks like straight up garbage that will break in about 10 seconds. Or maybe you’ll order it and it will never come at all, or maybe show up months later and broken.
These scammy fly by night ads are straight up from the Grinch.
Ads on Facebook are prolific and can be very appealing, especially around the holidays, but please resist the urge to click.
You could be signing yourself up for a lot more than you bargained for, and nobody needs to deal with scammers in an already stressful holiday season.
Stay safe online, do your shopping through legitimate websites, not via scammy ads on Facebook.
Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.