In addition to trying to steal your financial information, they’re even trying to get hold of your hard-earned frequent flier miles and hotel points.
Jeff Sakasegawa at Sift, a fraud protection company, says his employees continue to see an uptick in travel scams.
“Year over year there’s been about a 400% increase in fraud attempted within the travel industry, and to make it worse, the amount of fraud attempted is up about 754% year over year so more fraud (is) happening at larger dollar amounts,” he said.
Since the pandemic, more than $90 million was reported by consumers to the Federal Trade Commission in vacation and travel fraud.
A few of the scams Sift found online include a fraudster offering American Airlines gift cards at 30% off. Another scam Sift detected was frequent flier miles and hotel points for sale and then used to book travel.
“It’s usually done with stolen payment methods or hacked accounts truthfully,” Sakasegawa said.
With so many options to book your next travel, who you use matters.
“Look out for authorized resellers or preferred partners of these businesses, sometimes I know these programs do exist, but oftentimes are just fake friends for fraudsters to lull you into a complacent state to work with them,” Sakasegawa said.
An ABC11 viewer shared with us a scam she encountered the day before her flight on Alaska Airlines. She wanted to call…
