• Checkers and its cybersecurity team brook no quarter when it comes to scam sites using its name.
• A webpage selling Black Friday scams masquerading as Checkers Hyper was taken down today, with another site taken down recently scamming users with the Uniq brand.
• Online shopping scams are common in South Africa.

Do not mess with Checkers. The South African retailer and subsidiary of the Shoprite Group have quickly taken down a fraudulent website selling scams to locals purporting to be Black Friday deals.

The website used to be checkershypersa.co.za, but heading to that URL now brings up a dead webpage.

Checkers told MyBroadband yesterday that its cybersecurity team was already initiating a takedown of the site. We checked the page this morning at around 9:00 and it was still up and as of press time on Friday, the site no longer exists.

When we checked the site, it was offering Black Friday-like discounts on appliances and other products, most of which you would see on a real Checkers Hyper catalogue. It is likely that those who ordered products on the site had their money stolen.

On Thursday, Checkers warned users on social media that there was a website purporting to be affiliated with the retailer selling products. “The website is a fraudulent site and not affiliated with Checkers Hyper,” the company posted to Facebook.

It also shares a set of guidelines to follow for safe online shopping, warning users to never share their personal details with untrusted sites.

Checkers recently took down the URL of another site looking to be a fraudulent portrayal of the Checkers clothing spin-off Uniq – uniq-capetown.co.za. Like the Checkers Hyper clone site, this website also leads to a 404.

Online shopping scams are common on the South African internet so much so that the National Consumer Commission (NCC) launched a website last year so that South Africans can report when they have been scammed while shopping online.

Unlike the Checkers Hyper scam, some scam sites can be up for months even after being identified.

Scams like Manicaa.com and Milo Designs pop up frequently, steal thousands of Rands from unsuspecting South Africans and just as quickly disappear, with seemingly no repercussions for the owners of the fake websites.

In particular, Manicaa went as far as to reach out to us in an attempt to claim it wasn’t actually a scam website, despite the NCC declaring that it was and warning South Africans from venturing to its URL.

“I would like to state on record that we are not a fraudulent company nor are we scamming people,” either Webster or Clara Kutsawa, the site’s alleged owners, told us via email. Today the website no longer exists as the domain name has been taken over by something else – likely another online scam.

With scammers now going as far as to portray themselves as established retailers like Checkers, South Africans, it is getting even harder to protect oneself online, especially as the shopping craze heats up.

Check out this nifty guide below: