With the holiday season quickly approaching, and those grinchy 'bad actors' in full force, it is a great idea to get some holiday scam safety information out to all our family and friends. Every year thousands of people become new targets and victims of scammers and around the holidays three scams seem to jump into top as the most common:
Non-delivery scam: where you have purchased a product online and it never arrives
Auction fraud: a product you have purchased has been misrepresented on an auction site and there is no way to contact the seller
Gift card scams: where the seller of an item online asks you to pay with a prepaid gift card and never actually ships the item after they have the gift cards numbers. This scam is one of the most popular.
More than $281 million dollars were lost in 2022 from non-payment and non-delivery scams, another $264 million in losses was due to credit card fraud.
Always make sure that you are never clicking on suspicious links or attachments online, it is a very sneaky way to unknowingly download malware or get you to enter personal information.
Always be sure to do your own research if a company is contacting you about a refund or your account being locked, always be suspicious and find the appropriate number to call the company directly never use a link or number provided in an email.
Never wire money or use prepaid gift cards as a form of payment to any seller.
Always be very suspicious and protective of your information online and if you ever feel like you have been a victim report the crime to your credit card company and bank immediately, as well as reporting to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at ic3.gov.
For more information about holiday scams, visit: Holiday Scams — FBI
If you have any questions or would like any other scam safety information, feel free to call me and I will always help in any way that I can.