It’s time for another Black Friday and as usual the deals galore all over the web. If you are unaware, Black Friday is celebrated across the United States ducting the last Friday of November as part of the Thankgiving Day. The deals thrown open during Black Friday are generally extended up to Cyber Monday, which falls on the last Monday of November. If you missed the deals due to holidays, then you will have an option to grab the products including digital deliveries upto the first week of December. Even though the Black Friday deals looks shiny, you will come across fraudsters who try to lure you by offering lucrative offers. In this article, we will examine how you can avoid Black Friday scams.
Domain Registrations
Like in the case of web hosting, domain registrations will be cheaper only for the first year. The renewal prices will be surely higher than what you pay now. You can also transfer domain names from one registrar to another but that will be also cheaper only for the first year. This is the tactic of the companies to garner more customers. You can buy domain names from Godaddy, Namecheap etc. If you have doubts, you should establish contact with the sales team via email or live chat. Nowadays, all domain registrars provide live chat facility and it’s easy to clarify doubts quickly.
Deep Discounted Web Hosting
The Web Hosting is one of the core business that thrive during Black Friday. You will find Black Friday Deals from several reputed web hosting companies that throw away deep discounts by offering unlimited domains, disk space, emails, databases and much more. The reality is that the discounts are offered only for the first year or the first payment.
The companies will try to attract you by offering 5 year hosting package for a low cost. However, the renewal cost after 5 years will be significantly higher, which is way expensive for you. The companies often reject discounts during renewals. You will be compelled to move away all your files, emails etc to another provider who offer better rates after 5 years. We navigated the websites of all major web hosting providers and all of them provide low rates for the first year or payment.
Imagine, a situation where you invested for 3 or 5 years and then the provider offer slow servers. We don’t know the actual reality behind the scenes. You can also refer to reviews on the web to know more information about the company.
For example, if you are checking Hostgator, then just search with the keyword “Hostgator reviews” on Google, Twitter and Facebook. You will come across tons of reviews from customers who have used their services. Hostgator services are exceptional and the only point to note that the claim of unlimited is false. If the files accumulate, then they will warn you and emails will bounce.
We highly recommend HostingSpell if you are on a lookout for a reliable shared hosting for your WordPress blog. The company provides SSD storage with 24×7 technical support. The servers are fast and cost is affordable when compared with other competing providers. HostingSpell does not charge inflated renewal price and hence will not fall under Black Friday scams.
We are talking about small scale web hosting providers who throw in unlimited things at deep discounts with compulsion to subscribe for 3 or 5 years. We would suggest you to try for one year hosting package and then decide. You will have to pay more upon renewal but it’s the case with all providers. We don’t think none of the companies provide lifetime Black Friday deals because they want to attract customers and get more clients.
WordPress Themes
You will find tons of Black Friday Deals for WordPress Themes. Nowadays, bloggers prefer WordPress as their preferred Content Management System (CMS) for hosting their content. The blogs can be given a new lease of life with the help of WordPress Themes. You will find Black Friday Deals on Themeforest exclusively for WordPress themes, plugins and other related files. You should try to purchase themes only directly from Themeforest. Sometimes, the links embedded on third-party websites could have a malicious spyware or malware. We are not saying that all links have spywares but we don’t know the actual intention behind the unofficial links.
You should note that Themeforest only provides 6 months of free support from the date of purchase. However, the theme will continue to work without interruption. We found that the WordPress themes available on Themeforest are hard to use and are very complicated. You should try to buy themes with WPBakery support because elementor is hard to use for beginners. You will have to learn the usage before 6 months because support ends after after 6 months. You will have to opt for technical support packages after 6 months. Themeforest is now charging GST also for the WordPress themes and the cost will be higher.
Facebook Ads
You will notice several ads while navigating Facebook. The links will be very large in size with a combination of alphabets and characters. You should not click suspicious links on Facebook because you will be sharing financial information with the payment gateway. There is no way to check whether the links are legitimate or not. Facebook should develop a system to identify suspicious links. We recently noticed an ad where a person claims that he will teach how to get 100,000 YouTube subscribes for under Rs 1000 without using camera. We don’t think you can earn subscribers without using camera. The claims should be verified before investment.
Leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumers have been hearing about potential issues with retail and delivery supply chains. Although there are a lot of reasons why certain products might not be on store shelves or deliveries might be delayed, one reason we can’t overlook is cybersecurity. Because the retail supply chain is increasingly digital and interconnected, the entire chain can quickly be impacted by a single cyberattack on one company along the chain. For instance, we’re now seeing what used to be simply ransomware attacks turning into extortionware attacks. If a business gets breached and decides not to pay the ransom to get their data back, cybercriminals are now using that data to extort not only the business, but the customers and partners of that business as well. As a result, the blast radius of a cyberattack can escalate very quickly across a wide footprint. That has the potential to completely disrupt the retail supply chain. To guard against that, companies need to follow their established security best practices and maintain vigilance. But they must also be wary of how interwoven their supply chains are. They must be able to protect sensitive data and maintain secure access points as they interact with other businesses through the cloud.
Tom Callahan, Director of Operations, MDR, PDI Software
Instagram Ads
Just in the case of Facebook, you will notice several ads on Instagram too. Meta earns profit via these ads but you should check the credentials before buying anything via the links during the Black Friday. There are companies who inject ads because people often click them during Black Friday for discounts.
E-commerce marketplaces
The tech-savvy shoppers eagerly wait for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to grab products at great discounts. Amazon provides discounts for their devices such as Echo Dot, Echo Show and much more including Kindle devices. Walmart also offers both store and online discounts. You will also get discounts for laptops, smartphones and much more. In India, the e-commerce marketplaces normally throws away discounts during Diwali and not during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, you will still find discounts if you navigate official websites and mobile apps.
Conclusion
The tendency to buy products and digital items are higher during Black Friday. The Black Friday deals sounds interesting initially. However, if you carefully examine the deals, you will notice one -time discount, first year discount like that. The only point to note that is you should try to buy only from reputed platforms after examining all the conditions. With the increase in spyware and ransomware attacks, you have to very careful about the Black Friday deals fraud that spreads across the web.
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