Be wary of Google, I got phished from a sponsored Google search result.

I usually avoid sponsored Google search results but I wasn’t paying attention a couple weeks ago and searched for « The Ordinary » skincare website. The first result was sponsored and the url looked legit at first glance. The website looked legit, looked identical to the real site, with all the same products. The only red flag was that the site was running a generous site wide sale. But I had seen site wide sales on the real website before, so I didn’t think it was impossible.

It was only until I tried to complete the order that I realized my mistake. The website said my credit card was declined. I knew that could not be right because this is the card I use all the time and there’s no reason it would be declined. I went back to Google and realized that I had clicked a duplicate scam website, whose url was something like ordinary.us while the real one was the second Google result with ordinary.com

In the following days my account was flagged for fraud. Apparently they tried to call Chase and get into my account with the info they phished but Chase didn’t allow them to. They also tried to use my card at a grocery for $200 but it was flagged by Chase and declined. It was actually a PITA to get back into my account because some of the Chase agents were reluctant to let me reclaim my account over the phone because the scammer had tried get access to the account over the phone as well. I had to talk to like 5 different Chase agents but eventually I was able to reset my account and got a new card. Luckily I was not out of money.

So word of advice. Don’t click Google sponsored search results and always use a credit card online, probably would have been worse if I had used a debit card and they were able to get access to my bank account.