5 types of fraud prevalent in the US before Christmas

Christmas traditions take many forms: greeting cards, light displays, Secret Santas, adorable "ugly" sweaters. Much uglier is the annual tradition of cheating during the most beloved holidays of the year. We will tell you how not to lose money in the five most common pre-holiday fraud schemes.

Фото: Depositphotos

Stolen Bonus Points

As soon as you are thinking of spending your loyalty bonuses accumulated over a long time in an online store or on a travel planning website, you may find that they are no longer there, writes Consumer Reports.

"This can be blamed on recent data breaches at major companies, including Marriott, T-Mobile, MyFitnessPal, Facebook and Orbitz," says Ivan Novikov, chief executive of South San Francisco-based electronic security company Wallarm. He believes that most Americans have been affected by these hacks in some way.

“You can be sure that at least your current or one of your previous email addresses have been hacked,” Novikov says.

Bad actors expect many to use the same combination of email addresses and passwords for multiple sites. After your registration information has been stolen from one site, fraudsters use the software to connect it to thousands of other sites in search of matches. Such an “account” gives them access to your accounts, for example, in retail stores and banks. Then they can use your bonuses to buy goods or even open new accounts in your name.

• Protect yourself: change passwords. Change them often! Try using passphrases—chains of words, not just one or two. A password like ConsumerReports is easier to crack than, say, Consum3rRep0rts1sMyF@vorite!

Better yet, use a password manager, advises Novikov. This software application securely stores and encrypts all your passwords. You can use a password manager to generate strong, long, and unique passwords designed to protect you from hackers. The software also remembers PINs, security responses, and CVV codes—those three- and four-digit security codes on the front or back of credit cards. To apply this information, you use the one password you need for such a manager.

Novikov says that he himself uses the free version of LastPass. Other popular apps, including 1Password, Dashlane and KeePass, can cost you a few dollars a month.

Gift Card Fraud

If you received a gift card that you cannot use and do not want to renew, then you can easily find online buyers who are ready to take it from you personally. But be careful with those who offer it.

Fraudsters may ask you to perform a three-way "balance check" during which they tap the phone when you confirm the balance with the card issuer, said Shelley Hunter, blog author Gift Card Girlfriend.

What they do do is record the sounds of your key presses on your phone to determine your login information. “This way they can use the value of the card without you knowing,” she says.

Hunter said gift card buyers today don't have to worry about criminals using the previously popular method of scraping off the cover, writing down the code, restoring the cover and returning the card to the store shelf, then waiting for the buyer to activate it and get their money.

“I don’t think that happens that much anymore because gift cards are more secure,” she says. Better packaging or an additional PIN required for activation helped solve this problem, she said.

• Protect yourself: stay away from social media posts with gift card offers or people offering to pay 100% of the value of your card, says Hunter. A lawful buyer will pay you, say, 80% of the card value. For sale, it is better to use special gift platforms, such as Cardpool.com and Raise.com, which offer customer service contacts and are tracked by the Better Business Bureau.

Hunter says she sometimes hears from consumers that they can't access the stored value on their gift cards, especially Visa cards from Walmart. In fact, the cards deliberately prevent recipients from using them within 24 hours of activation. “This is an anti-money laundering measure,” she says.

Check the package or the card itself, which should indicate when it will be active, she advises.

Фото: Depositphotos

Going nowhere

During the holidays, many of us open our wallets for charitable causes. Fraudsters are well aware of this. Recently, a New Jersey couple and a homeless "Good Samaritan" were accused of fraudulently collected over xnumx xnumx dollarsby creating a page on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe. The couple allegedly sought financial assistance for a man they described as a homeless Marine veteran. They said the man helped them out when they ran out of gas - a story that later turned out to be false. All three accused of collusion.

“It's still a fairly new fundraising tool, so people aren't paying too much attention to vetting,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of a Chicago-based organization that evaluates other charities. “The scammer may present information in such a way as to make you believe that it is legitimate.”

Another dubious practice is that quite legal charitable organizations contact by phone and mail, and in the end spend most of the money they collect on the administration, rather than on actual services, Borohoff notes. They are not fraudsters, but they donate few resources to their real mission, he adds.

• Protect yourself: do not transfer money to crowdfunding accounts created by people unfamiliar to you personally. See how much charity and good things actually do on sites like CharityWatch and Charity Navigator.

If you want to get a tax deduction, you can also go to the charity's website to confirm its tax-free status or check with the IRS.

Scam sites and phishing emails

Super offers that you find on social networks, in an email newsletter or using a web search can lead you to sites that look very similar to real online stores, but in reality this is not the case.

Some of these scammers want to sell you counterfeit or damaged goods, but most often they just want to take your money and not give you the goods at all.

There are sites that ask for personal information and then use it to register credit cards in your name, steal from financial accounts and redirect payments intended for you.

• Protect yourself: look for telltale errors in the email addresses and links of seemingly familiar web addresses (i.e. amason.com instead of amazon.com are scammers). In email, hover over the sender's web address; something may be wrong if the address, for example, ends in .ru (from Russia).

"Watch out for URLs that use well-known brand names along with additional words," says Katherine Hutt, spokeswoman for the National Better Business Bureau, based in Washington, D.C.

To further protect yourself, type the company's URL directly into your browser rather than clicking on it in an email or social media post, which could lead you to a fraudulent site. And make sure any payment page has an "s" after the "http" in the URL to indicate the page is secure.

Parcel Shipping and Delivery Fraud

Anyone nice to get an unexpected gift. Fraudsters are counting on this psychological feature and the growth of seasonal deliveries of packages.

For example, in your mailbox, you may receive an official notice that you were trying to deliver a parcel. You call the number provided and ask for personal information, such as a credit card number or social security number, to complete the delivery. A fraudster may use this information to create credit accounts in your name and other forms of identity theft.

Another scam is an email that says you have a delivery problem. When you click on the link, you are taken to a fake site that asks you to hand over personal information.

According to Hutt, emails typically imitate UPS, FedEx or the US Postal Service, but they can also imitate a retailer, bank, or credit card company. “People are shopping more. Fraudsters follow their interests and use this to their advantage.”

• Protect yourself: Before calling the phone number provided in the email notification, check it for web addresses and tracking numbers. If the delivery is legal, you can track it on the official website of the delivery service or store. If you received a message stating that the seller had a problem with delivery, go to the website manually, instead of clicking on the link, and log in to your account, if you have one.

Matt O'Connor, a spokesman for United Parcel Service, says that a legal delivery service whose employee arrives at your door will never ask you to pay a commission or provide a credit card as an identity card to receive a package. You will need to show ID, such as a driver's license, only when delivering alcohol.

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