Lowes Offers $200 Coupon – Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Lowes Home Improvement has offered a $200 coupon for any purchase of $220 or more.
The Truth:
This is a scam.
Social media lit up with reports that Lowes had offered a $200 coupon — but the deal ended up being too good to be true. It is a phishing scam that was used by fraudsters to dupe people into giving up their personal information.
Lowes responded directly to a number of posts about the $200 coupon on Facebook:
“The post on Facebook is not affiliated with Lowe’s in any way. This is a phishing scam to try and gain personal and secure information. Please be careful when it comes to these sorts of pop-ups.”
The offer for the so-called $200 Lowes coupon appeared in a pop-up window and encouraged people to fill out a form with their personal information in order to redeem it. Pop-up windows are regularly used in phishing scams. The National Consumer League warns:
“Never enter your personal information in a pop-up screen. Sometimes a phisher will direct you to a real company’s, organization’s, or agency’s website, but then an unauthorized pop-up screen created by the scammer will appear, with blanks in which to provide your personal information. If you fill it in, your information will go to the phisher. Legitimate companies, agencies and organizations don’t ask for personal information via pop-up screens. Install pop-up blocking software to help prevent this type of phishing attack.”
Trusting your instincts is one of the best ways to protect against scams like this. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it usually is.