Christmas shoppers are warned about fake web sites

PROSPECTIVE ESHOPPERS have been warned to be on their guard against web sites that look like the real thing but are not.

It is possible that poor spellers, fast typers and the fumble fingered are most likely to fall victim to these online scams as they make the most of mis-spelt domain and web site names, according to the security firm Websense, which has bought this danger to our attention.

The firm has discovered about 2,000 web sites that it says use wrongly spelled domain names to scarf up personal data and security information. These include domains like JohLewis.com, Debenahams and Argoss.

The crooks are clever, according to Websense, and while normal firms will take your personal information in return for a service, these will just take your data to use it unlawfully. We're sure you'll agree that this is something that we can all do without, especially before Christmas.

We tried one out and were told that we had won something and were offered the chance to complete a survey. We are still doing so, and will update when we know what we have won.

Other online threats are web sites that use a different domain name than a legitimate one. For example tescovoucher.org, which Websense said had recently been registered and could be designed to capitalise on misspelling a real Tesco web page. We tried this web site, but the web page was unavailable.

"Cybercriminals are scary smart at enticing Christmas shoppers to unwanted sites. Whilst this looks like a consumer problem, typosquatting also puts company confidential data at risk as many employees shop from work computers at lunchtime," said Elad Sharf of Websense Security Labs. µ