Scam websites are any illegitimate domains and web pages created to steal your money, personal information, or infect your device with malware.
The scammer can create a fake website which can look identical to the original. They fake every part of the website they pose as, to lure victims into providing sensitive information (e.g. credentials and passwords).
Creating a website scam is a form of fraudulent and malicious activity that most hackers and scammers practice. It’s relatively cheap, and copying the content of a legitimate site is not difficult either.
Scammers spread links to their malicious websites, so they’d appear in:
Phishing emails or text messages
Social media posts and forums
Comments on any page online (usually distributed by bots)
Search engine ads.
Search engines can lead you to a scammer’s fake website; everything but a trivial nuance in the URL makes it look like the real company website.
For example, from the Google search results, instead of clicking on https://getmoss.com/app you click on a very similar browser address getmóss.co which takes you to the fake website, and you are led into the trap.
Once you land on a fake page, how the website scam works depends on the type of scam.
If you fall for this website scam, everything you submit on such a copycat website ends up in the hands of fraudsters.
Avoiding scam websites requires moving through the internet with caution and care, so always stay alert.