Is Linksoya.com A Scam? The Hard Facts You Need To Know

Linksoya.com is a scam website that offers to buy women clothing at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Linksoya.com shop, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Linksoya.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Linksoya.com may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and user reviews – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Linksoya.com Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Linksoya.com, it is improbable that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 instances typical for scam sites.

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

Wrong item. To make the transaction look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical outcome when ordering from pages like Linksoya.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting effort creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.

Linksoya.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Linksoya.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post huge amounts of marketing on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially persuasive 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 website, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed users 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, fraudsters 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Linksoya.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, since there were just a few buyers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam sites 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% reductions are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every sell-off has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes deceptive websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page 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 reach them out, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As frauds tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a completely different site, 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 complementary, as there are a whole lot of trustworthy shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, 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 payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique images. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images from other websites. When scammers market identical items on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-looking fraudulent sites. By searching for the image 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

Scammers do not steal only pictures. As frauds may scam people on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the site you’ve started on. 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

Frequently Asked Questions about the Linksoya.com Scam