FIELD TWP- Avid North Woods Grizzlies football fans who didn’t make the two-hour trip to Kelliher on Friday for the game are just the sort of fans online scammers are trolling for.
As the COVID-19 pandemic exerted its grip on the country and drove restrictions on attendance at high school sporting events, hundreds of schools turned to the internet to bring games to their fans stranded at home. Some schools turned to streaming their events on YouTube, while others like the schools in the St. Louis County school district turned to subscription-based services like the National Federation of High Schools Network.
Fans have become accustomed to looking for streaming broadcasts online, and scammers are all too eager to give them bogus options. A search of YouTube for livestreams of Friday’s North Woods game turned up more than 30 links proclaiming that they were streaming the game, when in fact no video stream was available at all.
YouTube thumbnail images for the links feature professional looking graphics and often use the logos of reputable sports organizations like the National Federation of High Schools or MaxPreps to appear legitimate, and the YouTube channels are often given official-sounding names.
To further ensnare a team’s fans, many scammers will post their links to a school’s social media page. One such link was posted to the North Woods Grizzlies Facebook page by “Patricia” for something called Gameday.click-score.com. A similar but different link was also posted to the Kelliher Public School page.
After clicking such a link, a viewer is told the live stream is only available to registered users and redirects to a “secure” sign-up page for unlimited access for $1. Providing an email and password gets you through to the sign-up page where they collect your credit card information, and have a fine-print notice that after a five-day trial period the subscription will be billed at $29.99 monthly.
And, of course, once you’ve completed the sign-up process, you don’t get to watch the game because there’s no live stream set up, but the scammers now have your email address, password (people commonly use the same password across multiple sites) and your credit card information. And they’re set to automatically bilk you out of $29.99 if you don’t cancel in a timely manner, a process that usually has to be completed by directly contacting a customer service line instead of canceling on the website.
To protect yourself against such scams, the first step would be to contact the school you’re following to see if they know of a live stream or radio broadcast of a game.
Those who subscribe to the NFHS Network service used by North Woods will get email notifications and have access to an online schedule for any game, home or away, that is being broadcast on the system. Only away games at another NFHS Network school are streamed on the service.
You can search YouTube to see if a school your team is competing against has an official channel they use for streaming games or uses a reputable service to provide a YouTube stream. Such is the case with the International Falls school district, which offered a free live stream of the Broncos-Grizzlies volleyball match two weeks ago through the YourLiveEvent channel.
On school social media sites, only click on posts for streaming that have been posted by the school that owns the page or feed. Posts of unfamiliar links in comment sections by individuals with streaming links are almost surely scams and you should avoid clicking on them.
As with any online activity, be wary of one that charges a minimal introductory fee requiring you to provide personal and credit card information. Such scams are commonplace, and low prices and emotional purchases, both attractive to sports fans, are common reasons people ignore scam warning signs, according to a Better Business Bureau study of online shopping fraud.
So, cheer on and follow your local high school sports teams, but when trying to follow from afar, be smart and safe about the streaming options presented to you.