New Aldi voucher scam warning

A new fake Aldi voucher scam has hit social media - claiming to offer £85 off at the discounter. In fact, it's designed to get hold of your personal details, and then use you to spam your contacts on social media.

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The scam appears to be a voucher offering a £85 discount - to celebrate Aldi's 55th birthday. It says that to claim your discount you just need to click the link, and enter your details. These include your name, address and date of birth. You are then invited to share the voucher on your own page.

Aldi has published a warning on its Twitter and Facebook pages, highlighting that this is a bogus offer. It said: "ALERT: there's a hoax £85 Aldi voucher circulating online. This offer is fraudulent and cannot be redeemed in our stores. We're investigating."

Common scam

It's not the first time a supermarket voucher scam has hit social media. It's not even the first time it has targeted Aldi customers. A similar scam was doing the rounds in March, and again back in October last year. Similar scams have claimed to offer vouchers for stores ranging from Sainsbury's to Tesco and Primark. They appear all over social media - including Twitter and Facebook - as well as on WhatsApp, text and email.

Sometimes they include spelling and grammatical errors that highlight the fact they are not genuine. In many cases they claim to be celebrating an anniversary that's wholly incorrect (Aldi, for example, was founded in 1913 so if it was celebrating any anniversary it wouldn't be its 55th birthday). Sometimes, however, at first glance they can seem convincing.

When you click on a link placed by the scammers, there's always a risk you could be downloading malware, which infects your computer and can spy on your passwords and details when you visit internet banks or online stores.

Even if there's no malware attached, you are handing over your personal details to the criminals. Used in conjunction with information on your social media profile, there's a real risk that they could gain enough data to commit ID theft.

It's therefore important to take steps to protect yourself from these scams. Aldi says it would never ask people to share their personal details via a website to redeem a voucher, so if you are ever asked to do this for any store, it's worth being sceptical. Don't click on any links, and don't enter any personal information.

If you are tempted by the deal, then visit the store's official social media pages. There will be details of any genuine offers on there, so you know that if there's no offer listed, there's a good chance you are looking at a fake.

If you want to get a good deal, then there are plenty of legitimate discounts available from the likes of Quidco, Topcashback, and Vouchercodes.co.uk - as well as direct on the offer pages of the supermarket itself.

Nowadays it's not difficult to get your hands on a genuine discount or freebie, so there's no need to be sucked into a scam.