Summer is officially here and you might be looking to beat the heat with a trip to a popular beach or dream overseas vacation, but experts warn that online scammers are looking to take advantage of eager travelers.
Vacation scams are nothing new. Travel can be expensive and people are looking to grab the best prices they can get, says Seckin Yilgoren, Mastercard's senior vice president for security solutions for North American markets.
This is especially true now as many people deal are dealing with increasing economic pressures and rising inflation. The problem is, a lot of great offers out there just aren't the real thing.
"Don't get me wrong, we all want the deals, but I think some are too good to be true," Yilgoren said in an interview.
According to Mastercard's analysis of its transaction data, fraud related to the early stages of travel planning rose 12% in 2024 from the year before.
That could partially stem from the fact that scammers are now using advanced tech, including tools powered by artificial intelligence, to create increasingly convincing fake emails, texts, social media posts and websites at a much faster rate.
Researchers at the cybersecurity company Malwarebytes recently spotted a collection of online ads that when clicked on led people to fake booking.com websites. Those sites featured malicious Captcha forms that would trick people into copying, and ultimately executing, code invisible to them on their computers.
That code would infect their computers with malware, allowing the attacker to remotely monitor the computers and gather sensitive and financial information, Malwarebytes said.
Many consumers don't think twice about completing a Captcha test these days and the instructions included with the scam Captchas look completely normal, says David Ruiz, a privacy advocate for Malwarebytes.
"It's hard to trust and know what is real and what is not," Ruiz said.
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