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So you've booked your flight, rented the car, and made your hotel or motel reservations. Everything is going smoothly - and then, what a delight!
You receive a friendly message that the staff at Hotel California is eagerly awaiting your arrival.
But did you know the hotel has a special 15% discount for your stay? One you can claim just by clicking on the link and letting them know which payment method needs to receive that re-adjustment... Or some other reason might be presented that urgently requires your attention, so please reply within 24 hours! The text or email may have a header from "Iris," the virtual concierge at Hotel California, which has been made the byline.
Should you have doubts, here is where making a good, old-fashioned phone call to the place where you have booked your stay will pay off.
How are these scams happening?
Scammers steal your booking details through phishing emails, weak or unused passwords, or target the hotel & travel partners' systems.
So to fully enjoy your trip and keep it scam-free, don't click payment links, even those that might be tempting you through the offer of a discount on the original price.
I get that making a phone call is now seen as a hassle, but in this situation, the reward is not losing money to fraudsters or the use of a card that had to be cancelled right before your big trip.
Discussion (6)
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Good advice, Carol. Thanks.
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It seems like text and email scams are increasing exponentially. Every day I get several emails telling me I have an invoice due. The email addresses are always so bizarre.
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Let's hope such scammers don't ever take the little bit of time and energy it would take to make their presentations more realistic.
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The prevalence of this sort of activity means that I assume every email and text message I receive is likely a scam attack.
Legitimate businesses have a lot of work to do to rid the world of these scammers if the legitimate businesses expect customers to trust electronic communications for more efficient and faster communication.
The lack of trust that scammers have taught me to have even makes communication with my friends more difficult.
Welcome to the new low-trust society that is likely our future.
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An interesting and unusual response profile for this Ricochet post: too few comments, yet a healthy amount of "likes" that brought it the Main Feed, and it's been rewarded with a high number of readers. Congratulations, CarolJoy!
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