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| - Fact Check: 99% discounts on Flipkart? No, this is a fraud website
India Today Fact Check found that this fraudulent 'Flipkart' website exists to harvest your data.
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India Today Fact Check
This website impersonating Flipkart is a data harvesting operation. It is in no way affiliated with the e-commerce brand.
We’ve all seen ridiculous offers during the sale season. But a more than 99 per cent discount is too good to be true. Under the guise of Flipkart’s Big Billion Days Sale, this is exactly what’s being offered: a Rs 80,000 Apple Watch for less than Rs 500; expensive Canon DSLRs, LG washing machines, and Samsung smartphones for about the same; and much more.
While the website linked in posts promising these literally unbelievable discounts looks like Flipkart — it also features the Big Billion Days Sale stamp — you already know we wouldn’t be talking about it here if it was legitimate.
So, yes. Of course, it’s not the real Flipkart website. A spokesperson for the company confirmed this to India Today Fact Check. But there’s more to it.
Dissecting the fake website
First things first. While the website looks like Flipkart, its URL reads exclisivese.live, and not flipkart.com. You’d think this is an easy red flag to spot. But take a moment and consider how often you look at the URL when you launch a link in the in-app browser of whatever social media platform you found it on.
Of course, there are many other discrepancies even if you miss the URL. Elements such as the shopping cart, categories like “offer zone”, “fashion”, and “electronics” etc. are not clickable. You can only click on the deals mentioned on the homepage. Additionally, while all products list 99 per cent discounts, the numbers don't add up when you calculate the percentages of the sale prices to the retail prices.
All of this should be enough to tip you off about potential fraud. Suppose, however, you’re curious about the deals regardless. What happens then?
Where the deals take you
When you select a product and click on “Buy Now”, you’re redirected to a new web page and asked to fill in personal details, like your name, address, and phone number.
As a rule, you should always be careful about what details you provide on any website. But for websites that scream fraud, it’s always a no-no! Websites like these either harvest your data to sell to others or use your details to commit financial fraud.
We entered false details to see where this would lead us. This redirected us to the “order summary” page and then the “payments” page.
Unlike the real Flipkart website or app, this payments page only features three options: PayTM, PhonePe and BHIM UPI. It doesn’t allow payments through debit or credit cards, net banking, or cash on delivery. You select only one of the three options and click “Buy Now”, which doesn’t work.
This makes it clear that the sole purpose of this website is simply data harvesting.
Using DomainTools, we found that “exclisivese.live” has been reported for phishing, malware, and spam.
No Kart at all
The Flipkart Big Billion Days Sale began on September 27 and ended on October 6. So, if you see posts like this pop up now, you know it’s fraud. Priyanka Serrao, the associate director for corporate affairs and external communications at Flipkart, also told India Today Fact Check that this website was not affiliated to the e-commerce brand in any way.
She explained that Flipkart has processes to report and take down such fraudulent sites and shared a recent blog post by the company highlighting precautions people can take to avoid getting scammed.
The lesson: 99 per cent discounts sound too good to be true — because they are.
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You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
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