Scam Alert: Fake Evite Invitations

TrainMyParent.com
Oct 30
3 min read

An evite invitation for a weekend warrior holiday party

The holiday season is just around the corner, which means holiday parties are on their way. Evite is a popular party invitation management website that has been the source material for fake invitations created by criminals in some of the latest phishing scam attempts.

How does the scam work?

Scammers send you an email invitation from somebody you know, and contained within the invitation is a link to Evite that will get you the party invitation details and let you RSVP. But, in reality the link points to an Evite lookalike webpage in which you must enter your email credentials to retrieve the invitation. But, there is no invitation, and you never successfully log into the fake Evite site. However, you have just repeatedly entered your email address and potential passwords that the scammers can now use for malicious purposes, such as hijacking your social media or email accounts, trying your email/password combination on a series of other websites like financial institutions, or other shady uses.

Why it works

First, scammers can easily figure out who your friends are, just by looking at your social media posts. Receiving a holiday party Evite from someone you know increases the probability that you will click on the link. Receiving an invitation from a friend or acquaintance is an exciting thing...you are wanted! And, the invitation is time-sensitive, creating a sense of urgency. Is your social calendar free that weekend?

In addition, the actual email invitation (pictured above) is very easy to duplicate. A few words, your name and your friend's name scraped from a social media platform, a button to view the invitation, a link to see who else is going to the party...this is very easy to automatically create and send.

Once you click on the link, you are brought to a fake Evite home page that asks you to login to view the invitation. The scammers are relying on you not remembering exactly what the home page looks like. Plus, they do not care if you cannot login to the site...they just want to collect your email address and password attempts. Voila!

What can you do?

First, prevention is the best medicine for these scams. You should ALWAYS preview links prior to clicking on them to see if they are legitimate. If you are unsure whether Evite's home page is at evite.com or e-vite.ru, perform a search on your trusty search engine. If the domains match, it might be legitimate. Party on!

Second, you should be using different, complex passwords for each of your accounts. If the scammers get your unique complex password, they will not be able to use it on any other sites because it is unique.

Third, remember the sniff test. Think about the situation prior to acting. Lets say you did click on the link and were brought to a login screen (you were lucky that the link did not install malware on your system). Actual Evite invitations do not require you to login, unless you are the party organizer. Why are you being asked to login now? And, you are not really friends with the host and you are really boring at parties, so why would you be receiving an invitation? Does the situation make sense?

Finally, if you did get tricked by this scam, change your password to whatever account(s) use the password(s) you entered into their fake login portal. In addition, enroll yourself in a TrainMyParent.com training program so you can hopefully prevent this from happening again.

a group of holiday revelers. — Happy Holidays!

Criminals are getting sneakier by the minute, and we need to stay on our toes and be vigilant before responding to emails like these and falling into their trap.

Learn how you can protect yourself or your family by enrolling in the Complete Internet Security Basics and Phishing Awareness Course for Parents on TrainMyParent.com

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