Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Travel Scams Circulating This Holiday Season

Part of the speech I give at travel shows around the country involves all of the legitimate travel freebies one can scoop up nowadays. So I may be one of the people to blame for folks out there thinking they can get something for nothing.

Alas, in the case of free flights with Southwest Airlines, there's no such thing as a free ride.

But hackers would have us think otherwise.

I was alerted to the scam when a Facebook friend posted a cheery "I love Southwest!" with a link below it to a site one had to click on for the free coupons, good for flights anywhere. The giveaway that this was a fraud: the claim that Southwest would be giving away 3000 coupons for free flights. In this economy, with the cost of fuel as it is? Fuggedabout it.

I then scanned the internet and found this useful blog about what to do if you do fall for this scam, and have your information "phished".

Apparently, recent scams have claimed that JetBlue and Delta are also giving away free tickets.

Sigh. If only....

Fraudulent Check-In Scam
And that ain't the end of it, folks. Apparently devious scammers have been sending out confirmations for a flight Thanksgiving week between New York and Los Angeles. When unsuspecting victims click on any part of the email, a harmful virus gets unleashed.

Unfortunately, a number of Delta customers have gotten the email. Here's a complete article on the ruse, and what one should do if you click first and think second.
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 16, 2011 at 5:01 PM

    Not only are these scammers scamming people out of money and identy info,the fear is stopping people from claiming legimate prizes.I won a trip to Europe that several people turned down before me.Pretty easy to tell it was real and sponsored by legimate companies, but still because of the scammers out there, people don't believe anything.
    So if one enters a contest and your told youv'e won,check it out first before you turn it down.
    Travel Rob

    ReplyDelete
  2. Scam InfoNovember 20, 2011 at 10:13 AM

    Thanks for the post. Totally agree, one has to be very careful, but not all apples are rotten. A good source of information about scams is www.scaminfo.org You'll find there hundreds of different scams, arranged by country and frequency of occurrence. If you have any experiences to add or share, please do.

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