Queensland, Australia, homeowners disclose receiving packages correctly addressed to them containing items they did not order, the Daily Mail reports.
The scam, called “brushing,” blossomed after online shopping grew rapidly due to Covid-19 pandemic business restrictions, the report noted.
Online vendors conduct a fake sale where they are their own customer. The scam occurs when the seller ships the products to a real person using harvested online data.
The recipient’s name and details are used to create a seemingly genuine product review in their online store to positively distort their store’s reviews of their store and products.
Vendors must ship real products because many e-commerce sites have installed fraud detection algorithms designed to prevent sellers from leaving false reviews.
“I received two rings in the mail,” a southeast Queensland consumer explained in a social media post, according to the Mail report. “I didn’t order them but it was addressed to me with correct name and address? Is this some sort of scam?”
North Brisbane resident David Edwards told local media he recently received four packages on separate occasions, the Daily Mail reported.
‘They all contained different items,” he told the Sunday Mail, “the first one we sent back, the second had a pink wig and some Halloween goth style temporary tattoos. The third was some lacy glove type things and some jewellery, and the fourth that arrived yesterday had a piercing kit.”
The report noted vendors usually send lightweight, low-end products to their unsuspecting victims.
Scammers typically find or buy details about people from data breaches of banks, companies and government agencies. The purchased information, such as a person’s name, photo and mailing address, makes the “brushing” seem authentic, rather than the scam it is.
“If you’re a victim of a brushing scam this is the first warning that your data could be used for other types of identity theft,” University of Queensland professor Ryan Ko informed the Daily Mail.
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