With the start of the holidays approaching, it’s time to search for attractive destinations, good-priced accommodation, affordable flights… On this occasion, researchers from the company Kaspersky analyzed the most common frauds that target “the ‘carelessness of some users’. Flight offers, reservations and holiday packages at unbeatable prices, which hide well-crafted scams. To prevent travelers from falling into this trap, researchers from the company, which specializes in computer security, have revealed the 3 most common schemes used on the net.
The most common scam: that of the reservation of the plane ticket. Kaspersky researchers have looked into the subject. Their research identified many fraudulent websites claiming to offer cheap airline tickets. Very well designed, these sites perfectly imitate well-known airline services and ticket aggregators. They take the scam to extremes by even using the actual flight details with search queries to legitimate aggregators and their information. But the purpose of the scam is not to deliver the promised tickets. It is primarily to steal your money and use your personal information for evil purposes. In particular, they can resell your bank details and identifiers on the dark web.
After booking your train or plane ticket, the second step in preparing your vacation for a trip is: finding accommodation. It is the most popular bait for scammers. One of the most common summer vacation scams involves making false online advertisements for vacation rentals or hotels. Which brings us to another type of accommodation scam: hotel reservations. Fraudsters create fake websites that mimic legitimate hotel booking platforms.
The first sign of a scam: when these sites prompt to log in with credentials: Facebook or Google. This operation allows crooks to gain unauthorized access to your social networks, or your email account. The major risks involved: identity theft, unauthorized transactions and other malicious activities. The bigdata.fr site gives the typical example of a summer vacation scam to avoid: the phishing page that asks you for login credentials.
Scammers are usually computer experts with a keen eye for detail. They create websites so believable that they become misleading. Another technique, they send emails claiming to offer participants the chance to win a large reward, the amount of which is around $100. The condition: having completed surveys on travel. These scams are often based on people’s desire to make money and their willingness to share their opinions. But, again don’t get caught, as these surveys are designed to collect personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers.
They even make it possible to collect financial data under the guise of eligibility conditions or price distribution. Result of the scam: the promised rewards never arrive and the information provided is used for fraudulent purposes such as identity theft or unauthorized access to bank accounts. To drive the point home, at the end of the maneuver your friends are generally invited to share the site so that they too can obtain a prize. This allows cybercriminals to use victims to spread summer vacation scams.
So be careful of these many credible-looking sites, which offer prices that are far too attractive to be true. This will save you from unpleasant surprises on the eve of the holidays!
