No Respite from Scammers at Christmas

Watch out for these common ways of taking money from the innocent.

Gift Card Scams

People like to receive gift cards but before buying one, check to see the packaging hasn’t been tampered with so that the PIN number is exposed. Scammers can lift the value out of the card and you just have the shell  with an exposed PIN number. It’s not a good idea to buy cards from a third party website. Get the cards directly from the retailer. The Federal Trade Commission warns against using gift cards to pay for anything other than merchandise from the company that issued the card. And “Anyone who demands payment by gift card is always, always, always a scammer,” according to Jennifer Leach, assistant director of the FTC’s Division of Consumer and Business Education.

Identity theft

Thieves can intercept public Wi-Fi and connections without malware protection putting and steal your credit card numbers and bank account information.  Letters from Santa” sold by other than retailers are ways of obtaining identity information of children and they learn as adults their credit rating has been ruined by identity thieves.

Fake retail websites

The site may look like Amazon or some other vendor but notice the domain name at the top. If it has anything other “storename.com”, it’s likely not. Make sure websites are certified as being safe, beginning with https://, which means the site is using a secure, encrypted connection to your computer.

“Any malicious link can be made to look like Amazon.com,” Experian’s Bruemmer noted. The sites often have similar web addresses (for example, “amazon-shop.com”) and look visually identical to the retail sites they are “spoofing,” or copying. But if you attempt to “buy” a product, you’re just giving scammers your personal data and a credit card number.

Donation scams

Some scammers make websites that look like legitimate charities, but there’s always something wrong with the domain name. Some scammers use the telephone to solicit donations that go into the callers’ pocket.  Charities can be verified through such sites as Charity Navigator or Give.org.

Travel scams

Travel offers that look too good to be true, probably are fake.