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Every year, hackers get a little more savvy when it comes to scamming people out of their hard-earned money. This year is no different.
What time is better to target the public than the holiday season? It’s a time of year when people are ready and willing to part with their savings and are searching for any offers that may help them get the most bang for their buck.
The holidays are also a time when a lot of people experience feelings of loneliness – they miss friends and family and may struggle with personal situations that could make them more susceptible to cybercriminals. The level of personal and financial vulnerability during the holidays has led to an increase in scam tactics through every possible channel. Unsurprisingly, Black Friday is historically the most popular day for fraud attempts in the U.S.
So, how can you protect yourself and your loved ones this year? You can start by identifying some of the most popular online holiday scams. Keep reading to learn all about them.
Have you received a text message or email that appears to be from UPS, USPS, or another parcel service giving you some “odd” news about a package you may or may not have ordered?
Because this is a time when scammers know people are more likely to order goods online, this con has grown in prevalence.
People receive a message, and often it looks legit. It may be formatted like other parcel service notifications, it can include official logos, and it may even be sent from an email or contain a link that has the company’s name in it. The more legitimate the message looks, the easier it is to trick the recipient into reacting to it.
There are a few possibilities here.
According to the FCC, another variation on the scam can cost you money simply by calling the phone number back. The fake delivery notice will include a callback number with an 809 area code or another 10-digit international number. Calling back can result in high connection fees and costly per-minute rates
The short answer is: Do NOT click through any link sent from a supposed parcel service via email or SMS.
If you HAVE an outstanding delivery, you can always contact the post office or parcel service directly to ask any questions you may have about the validity of messages you receive.
The post office has confirmed that it will never contact you asking you to click any link, so always avoid interacting with unsubstantiated messages completely. If you do receive a suspicious parcel service message, report it to The Federal Trade Commission, and make sure that you block the sender so that you don’t accidentally click through in the future.
FACT: In the first nine months of 2023, people reportedly lost $23.6 million due to text message scams alone.
This scam is every bit as despicable as it sounds. When the holiday season hits, parents look for ways to make it as special and memorable for their children as possible. What better way to bring magic into the Christmas season than a customized letter sent courtesy of Santa Claus?
Unless “Santa” in this case is really a scammer who’s pulling on your heartstrings to get to your wallet.
These scammers will use several channels to try and fool people into giving them money. They may send advertising emails directly to your account, use paid advertising channels, place ads on social media, contact people via SMS, and sometimes create legitimate-looking websites to make targets feel more comfortable about putting in their payment info.
They advertise a custom “Santa letter” service that offers to send special communications to children on behalf of Mister Claus. This service will usually have a pretty reasonable cost and may offer variations like emails, texts, or even phone calls from the big man himself.
However, once parents put their payment info in for the service, the Scam Santa never delivers.
As soon as your financial info is put into their system or shared with them, criminals take the financial info and help themselves to as many “presents” as the bank account can afford.
This can lead to several problems, including (but not limited to):
Be very cautious when considering setting up Santa letters for your children. Make sure that the company has been around for a substantial amount of time, check the activity on their social media accounts, and make sure to read reviews across multiple sources about the brand. It’s easy to fake reviews in just one place, but more difficult to do so across all channels.
If you want to simply send a customized letter to your child yourself, the postal service has some simple instructions for doing so that will make the experience just as magical. You can find that info by clicking here.
Everyone needs more money, but this is especially true during the holiday season when the pressure to provide gifts for people you care about overrides budget plans.
Scammers know this, and they’ve learned how to take advantage of it. Beware of seasonal work offers that sound way too good to be true. Criminals use false advertisements on job boards, emails, and social media to draw people who need temporary work.
These criminals have become more sophisticated today – they create professional-looking websites and run ads for seasonal work. When someone clicks through the holiday job posting, they are redirected to a website that looks legitimate. In reality, this site is just a front being used to collect sensitive personal data.
People offer up their social security numbers, addresses, direct deposit information, and other information, all while believing that it’s required for a job application. But when it comes time for them to hear back from the company, the website will have disappeared–taking all of their personal information with it.
If scammers are successful at collecting your personal information, they can use it for identity theft, bank fraud, credential stuffing attacks, and several other nefarious activities. Occasionally, they collect this data and sell it on the dark web to the highest bidder.
This can be a scary scenario and leaves many feeling like they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them. It’s especially damaging for those who experience financial losses at a time of year when they are trying to do holiday shopping. It can take a long time for banks and credit card companies to iron out identity theft issues, leaving many victims in a bad spot that can have a lasting impact on their credit.
Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to protect yourself from becoming a victim of the seasonal work scam.
Deals can be everything this time of year. But as we’ve said before, if it’s too good to be true…it’s probably a scam. This becomes apparent when you get an email from your favorite brand, click on the link, land on a legit-looking site, give them your payment info, and then never hear from them again. Oof.
Website spoofing is a more complicated form of phishing that occurs when a scammer mimics the style of a trusted brand to create a website that looks like a legitimate part of that brand. They’ll use logos, steal content off of the site, and even place copyright claims at the bottom of the page. All to fool people into giving them personal information.
They may link to these sites from ads, emails, and/or social media posts, and their goal is to make everything look as consistent and trustworthy as possible. Oftentimes, scam artists will use a hook to draw consumers in.
This may be something like: “Fill out this survey and get a free high-end product,” or “Click this special sale link and get everything at 75% off.” The goal is to do whatever it takes to convince the recipient to click through to the fake website.
Once there, the site may contain a survey, a product page (copied from the legit site), or some other enticing deal designed to part you and your hard-earned money.
When people follow through with a purchase, survey, or membership on one of these spoofed sites, they often provide their full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and financial information. If asked to “create an account,” the scammers may also save these credentials and use them in a future credential-stuffing attempt.
FACT: Credential stuffing involves taking a set of credentials and applying them to different accounts to try and gain access to someone’s personal information.
The info collected from spoofed websites can be used for identity theft, financial fraud, or sold on the dark web to the highest bidder. This can result in scammers passing personal info to other scammers who then incorporate it into future phishing, robocalling, or other types of cons.
Once your information is accessible, it can be very difficult to track down the original point of the data leak.
While it can be admittedly difficult to discern a fake site from a legitimate one, there are some red flags to look out for. If you see any of these signs, don’t click through the links. Instead, navigate straight to the verified brand URL and look for the same deals there.
If they don’t match, then it’s more than likely a scam.
Keep an eye out for this website spoofing tricks over the holidays:
If you’re ever in doubt about the validity of a site or deal, go straight to the source and only buy from brands and websites you know you can trust.
‘Tis the season for gargantuan shopping excursions. Unfortunately, scammers are out in droves to take advantage of eager holiday spenders. Consumers who are doing their shopping online are often inclined to create new accounts, sign up for discounts, and activate memberships in pursuit of the hottest gifts of the year.
With all of this happening, it’s easy for people to forget what companies they’ve shared their email addresses and phone numbers with. So, it may not feel out of the ordinary to suddenly see an inbox full of sales emails, or a few new SMS messages a day offering “special limited time” discounts.
While the spam feature on your inbox may catch the majority of these phishing emails, there are always some that find their way into your primary inbox. They may contain flashy subject lines claiming unreal discounts, free trials, contest entries, and even indicating that you’ve “won” something from their company. In some cases, these can be the beginning of a website spoofing scam.
On the flip side, scammers also recognize that this is a time of year when many people connect with family and friends. It’s easy for a con artist to find the names and locations of your family members online (especially if you aren’t using Cloaked) and then send emails pretending to be these people.
They may make personal-sounding email addresses or try and text from a “new number” to get you to engage with them. Oftentimes, they try to sound very personal from the very beginning in an attempt to capitalize on the rapport of an existing relationship.
Then, they may provide a sob story about a “sudden illness,” or an inability to pay for basic necessities during the holidays. The goal of this type of holiday phishing scheme is to convince you to send them information or money in a way that exposes your financial information.
Once they have this, they’ll do their OWN holiday shopping at your expense.
Similar to website spoofing (the two often overlap), the threat actors in this holiday phishing scam will collect personal information with the intent of using it for financial gain, identity theft, or to sell on the data black market. In some instances, they may even try to take advantage of the victims multiple times, often pretending to be family members, charities, or people in need, and asking for money on more than one occasion.
At best, people figure out what’s happening before it goes too far. At worst, they can lose their life savings by voluntarily sending money to people or companies under deceptive circumstances.
There are several things you can do to protect yourself this season:
If you feel that you may have already shared your personal data with scammers this holiday season, it’s important to catch it as early as possible. The following resources can provide you with additional information and agencies where you can check your identity theft status and report data leaks.
Falling for holiday scams can definitely impact the holiday spirit…but we have some good news for you.
You can shop til you drop this holiday season without putting your privacy or security at risk. How? Your digital privacy holiday helper: Cloaked.
Cloaked gives you control over your data with the instant creation of new phone numbers, email addresses, and secure credentials for each account or connection. You can use these “identities” in any situation where someone is asking for your personal information.
Not only does this help prevent scammers from accessing your permanent personal info, but it can also help you identify just when and where your data was leaked.
Enjoy this holiday season without having to worry about your identity.
