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November 20, 2024
The holiday season is a time for thankfulness, togetherness, joy, and cheer. It's also the time of year when consumers need to be most vigilant of fraud, scams, and cyber-attacks! Stay on guard this holiday season so one of these common scams doesn't ruin your holiday plans.
Scammers are always looking for new ways to defraud people of their money and personal information. Whether it's modern technology or increased awareness of older scams, swindlers' methods are constantly evolving and adapting. Here are just a few of the newer scams we've seen in recent years:
Social Media Scams. As you scroll through the endless feed of content on your social media platform of choice, you'll come across hundreds of links that will take you off the platform to other websites. You need to be careful when clicking an external link on social media: it could be directing you to a scam website or even worse sending you to a site that will download malware onto your computer.
Before you click a link to an interesting news article or a remarkable offer on some product you were considering purchasing, take the time to instead search for that news story on a reputable news website or find that product on a trusted retailer's webpage.
Look-Alike Websites. Scammers are getting better at spoofing existing websites with the intent of capturing your account information or downloading malware onto your computer. Always double-check the URL of any website you visit. Scammers can create sites with URLs that look remarkably similar to those of legitimate sites. Make sure you're on Amazon.com, not Arnazon.com!
Fake Travel Booking Sites. Nothing ruins a holiday vacation like reserving your trip on a fake booking site. Scammers take advantage of common phrases and keywords to have their fake booking sites appear in search results for consumers looking for deals on popular travel destinations or through pop-up ads on vacation and travel blogs. When providing personal and financial information via the internet, always make sure you're on a legitimate business' website.
Compromised Account Alerts. You receive a surprise message on your phone claiming that your account has been compromised and instructing you to click a link to resolve the issue. You’ll feel the urge to click the link as soon as possible in case your information may be at risk—and that's when they get you! Scammers often use panic to stop you from thinking rationally in the moment, long enough to get you to surrender account information.
Financial institutions (New Tripoli Bank included) will never ask you to provide account information over the phone or via a link in a text message. When in doubt, you can contact whatever business the text message is claiming to represent in order to see if the alert is legitimate.
Not all scammers are reinventing the wheel this holiday season. In addition to the aforementioned schemes, many con artists fall back on classic scams updated with a new coat of paint, taking advantage of advances in communications technology to further obfuscate their true intentions from unsuspecting victims. Here's a refresher on some of the most common scams you'll encounter:
Gift Card Scams. Who doesn't love gift cards? I'll tell you who—government agencies, legitimate businesses, and financial institutions. If you receive a message from someone claiming to be from the government or some business to whom you owe money and they start asking for gift cards, this is an immediate red flag! Once your money has been put onto a gift card, it's impossible to recover in the event of a scam. That's why scammers love asking for payment in the form of gift cards.
Charity Scams. 'tis the season of giving, but unscrupulous scammers see the opportunity to take advantage of others' kindness in order to trick them out of their money. One common scam is being contacted by a fake charity thanking you for a donation you never made and then rushing you into providing payment. These fake charity scammers also rarely mention how they plan to use your donations to help those in need—since your money will never make it to them!
Always research any charity you intend to donate to, and never send donations in the form of gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency; all of these methods are hard to trace and impossible to recover your money from.
Package Delivery Scams. While these scams happen throughout the year, they are especially pernicious during the holidays when it is more likely consumers are on the lookout for updates on their package shipments. You'll receive a call or text from someone posing as the US Postal Service or other delivery service that will include a fake tracking link. The link will take you to a site requesting personal information, or it will download malware onto your device.
Fake Gift Exchanges. A variant of the old "pay in advance" scam, this scam asks you to join an online gift exchange, where you buy a $10 gift for a stranger with the promise of receiving many gifts from other participants in the future. Some of these function as pyramid schemes, asking you to contact additional participants in order to keep the grift going. Just use common sense when someone you don't know is asking you for money and respectfully decline.
Emergency Scams. One of the most common methods scammers use to get you to fall for their swindle is to create a sense of urgency or panic in order to keep you from taking the time to think about what they're asking you to do. One of the best ways to create this sense of urgency is to pretend to be a friend or family member in an emergency, such as a car accident or police arrest. These scammers will ask you to send them money in order to resolve their fake emergency, then disappear with your money. Oftentimes, these scammers will browse your social media in order to learn enough about your personal life in order to pretend to be a friend or family member.
Before you send any money, you should verify the person's story with another friend or family member. Ask questions of the caller that would be difficult for an impostor to answer correctly. Also, if they ask you to send them gift cards or wire money—that is an immediate red flag that this is a scam!
Puppy Scams. Pets can make great gifts but come with a lot of caveats. Fake pet sellers are a common issue for online marketplaces such as Facebook marketplace, where scammers post stock photos of animals looking for people who want to buy a pet, take their payment, and never deliver a furry friend. If you're thinking of gifting someone a pet for the holidays, you can take steps to make your transaction safer, such as asking questions of the seller, requesting to meet them in person, and requiring documentation.
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