Haymask.com Exposed: Legit or Total Scam? Our Findings

Haymask.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the Haymask.com store, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Haymask.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Haymask.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and customer testimonials – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Haymask.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Haymask.com, it is unlikely that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 scenarios standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fraudulent items of popular brands, the standard will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically common case when ordering from pages that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may ship a incidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common case when ordering items from websites like Haymask.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting time creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Haymask.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Haymask.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of advertisements on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly the same things as the websites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the site, swindlers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, free delivery, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed consumers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a peculiar manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers offer using direct bank transfers, Venmo or CashApp. Thing is, the latter do not provide any refunds, regardless of the circumstances. Even when you can prove that the transaction went to fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Haymask.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, scammers do not bother themselves with creating well-rounded disguises, so the same red flags repeat from one site to another.

1. Fake or absent reviews

Fraud sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, as there were only a few clients yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, when you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Always search for reviews on Google – this may save your money.

2. Unbelievably high discounts/low prices

No merchants will sell goods at loss for themselves. 70%, 80%, 90% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the site will have no support contacts at all.

Typically for fraudulent sites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a great possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different website, be sure that this is a blatant scam.

A chain of scam sites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is not a guarantee, as there are plenty of legit shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds most likely don’t have any real items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images from other websites. When rascals offer identical goods on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam sites. By reverse image searching on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scammers who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Haymask.com website, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you see excessive amounts of ads in your browser, have your search queries going into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your computer with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

1. Begin by downloading Gridinsoft Anti-Malware, accessible via the blue button below or directly from the official website gridinsoft.com.

2.Once the Gridinsoft setup file (setup-gridinsoft-fix.exe) is downloaded, execute it by clicking on the file.

3.Follow the installation setup wizard's instructions diligently.

4. Access the "Scan Tab" on the application's start screen and launch a comprehensive "Full Scan" to examine your entire computer. This inclusive scan encompasses the memory, startup items, the registry, services, drivers, and all files, ensuring that it detects malware hidden in all possible locations.

Be patient, as the scan duration depends on the number of files and your computer's hardware capabilities. Use this time to relax or attend to other tasks.

5. Upon completion, Anti-Malware will present a detailed report containing all the detected malicious items and threats on your PC.

6. Select all the identified items from the report and confidently click the "Clean Now" button. This action will safely remove the malicious files from your computer, transferring them to the secure quarantine zone of the anti-malware program to prevent any further harmful actions.

8. If prompted, restart your computer to finalize the full system scan procedure. This step is crucial to ensure thorough removal of any remaining threats. After the restart, Gridinsoft Anti-Malware will open and display a message confirming the completion of the scan.

Remember Gridinsoft offers a 6-day free trial. This means you can take advantage of the trial period at no cost to experience the full benefits of the software and prevent any future malware infections on your system. Embrace this opportunity to fortify your computer's security without any financial commitment.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Haymask.com Scam