JACKSON, Tenn. — Sponsored ads are becoming a new target for scams here in West Tennessee.

The Better Business Bureau has issued an alert relating to sponsored ads on search engines and social media. Some of these ads may redirect you to a different website in an attempt to get you to enter personal information.

We spoke with BBB PR Communications Specialist Toddnetta Trice for some insight.

“A lot of these search engines are not keeping tabs or really doing what they need to do to determine whether or not these are imposters,” said Trice.

Here’s an example from BBB’s website of a spoofed website trying to imitate a popular hardware store.

Notice how the link is misspelled and the aesthetics are not the same.

BBB recommends always confirming a website’s legitimacy, using caution when buying on social media and avoiding deals that are too good to be true.

“They pay those search engines a certain amount of money to be at the top, so that could be the first option so a lot of times they are not legitimate companies that are paying to be at the top. They are imposter companies; scam companies that are wanting their posting to be at the top to get more people to come and visit them,” said Trice.

Scammers are able to pull this off because it is easy to make a lookalike website to seem like the real deal.