Watch out for holiday scams

The holiday season is approaching and booking trips on the Internet is popular. Fraudsters also benefit from this. With tempting offers, so-called holiday scammers entice their potential victims to fake websites in order to cash in or to obtain personal data and card information.

According to a report in the 21 May 2023 edition of Sonntagszeitung, half of all holidays five days or longer are booked on the Internet. For shorter trips, around 60 percent already book digitally. Shoppers focus on hunting for the best offer at a bargain price and become less mindful. This is exactly what fraudsters take advantage of. Blinded by super-cheap offers or limited availability, potential victims no longer pay close attention. They end up on fake websites. These often look like the platforms of reputable providers and are not immediately recognisable as fakes. There, victims are tricked into making advance payments or down payments under a pretext. If you aren’t careful, you may lose a lot of money.

With a few basic rules you can protect yourself from such scams!

What can I do?

• Be suspicious of offers that are too good to be true.
• Check the general terms and conditions and the legal notice of the booking platform.
• Never give out personal login or card information until you have done thorough research on the travel provider.
• Only visit safe sites that start with https://.
• Always use 3-D Secure for payments.
• Check payment requests and compare them with the payee.
• Do not approve payments until you have verified the amount and merchant name.
• Pay attention to atypical sender addresses, spelling mistakes and logos.
• Cancel the payment process immediately if something seems strange.
• File a complaint with the police if money has been stolen from you.

Source: “The tricks of online scammers”, Sonntagszeitung, 21 May 2023

“The tricks of online scammers”, Sonntagszeitung, 21 May 2023 (only available in German)