A new year means a new start – it’s time to get fit and there are quite a few deals out there. On Facebook you see a local gym advertising a discount on membership if you sign up within the next few hours. There are limited spaces so you act quickly.
It’s only after you pay that you realise the ad was a fraud: you’ve received no membership details and when you contact the gym it has no record of your payment.
The scam is one of a number of fitness-based frauds criminals focus on in January, when people are looking to trim their waistlines or improve their health.
Others include nonexistent personal trainers who offer “bespoke” training plans, which are copied from free sites, or fake fitness apps that only harvest users’ data.
Marijus Briedis, the chief technology officer at the cybersecurity company NordVPN, says criminals typically clone real ads or sites from legitimate businesses.
It can be difficult to discern between the real and the fake, although the web address may have a couple of different characters. Criminals can also use sponsored results on search engines so that if you search online, you will be presented with their fraudulent site.
“The new year fitness rush creates the perfect environment for scams, because people are often signing up quickly without taking the time to check who they’re dealing with,” says Briedis.
“Gym offers or training plans that rely on urgency, extreme discounts or pressure to ‘sign up today’ should be treated with caution, especially if there are limited contact details or no independent reviews.”
NordVPN warns that freely available AI technologies mean images can be altered to make muscles appear more bulked up in order to lure people in with tales of success.
How to spot a fitness scam
The first part of the fraud is usually an ad on social media. It may promise a cheap gym membership with a special offer for January, or it could be a personal trainer offering a tailored regime to get you started.
There will frequently be a sense of urgency attached to the ad – such as there are only a certain number of places left at the advertised price or the offer runs for a very limited time. This is a typical tactic by fraudsters to try to prompt people into reacting without fully thinking through the purchase.
If you hand over your bank details, Briedis says the criminals will take the payment you expect and then store them for use in a future fraud. The tactics are identical to a similar strategy where people are promised discount holidays only to have their money stolen.
“The first goal is the money. If they cannot do the money goal, the second part is about the data [and to] collect as much information as possible,” says Briedis.
What to do about it
If you click on a link, pay close attention to the address of the website you land on. Often one or a few of the letters will be different from a legitimate site, although they may appear similar. For example the fraudsters may use a zero instead of the letter O.
Better still, “avoid clicking on links in unsolicited emails or social media messages claiming to be from gyms or fitness brands”, says Briedis. “If there’s a problem with a membership or subscription, it’s far safer to go directly to the official website or app rather than following a link.”
Beware of anyone asking to be paid by bank transfer – this means you will not be able to use the section 75 protections that come with using a credit card.
If you think you have been defrauded, contact your bank immediately. After that, contact Action Fraud, the central hub for fraud and online crime.
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