From social media to holiday travel, scammers are looking to dash your dreams of dough.
SAN ANTONIO — The holidays are rapidly approaching and Texans are getting ready to spend big bucks. But scammers are set to hop on your holiday spending to grab as many greenbacks as possible.
Shopping online, booking trips, and giving back. So many reasons shoppers need to be aware of this year’s emerging scam trends to keep your self secure and your money as merry as possible. Starting with holiday travel scams. Jason Meza, the Director of Communications for the Better Business Bureau of South Texas told us, “Unfortunately we’re going to see that a lot during the season. It’s just going to get worse as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday and the Christmas holiday and into even into spring travel.”
Top travel scams include fake travel websites, vacation rental scams, phishing texts and emails, to-good-to-be-true deals, and rental car and fuel scams. Meza added, “I would double check the reservations in your name. Just call ahead to their airline, call ahead of the hotel. and just be sure that you’ve got a booking and that it is secured.”
The BBB says some of the top online scams of Christmas include social media gift exchanges where gifts are exchanged online and your personal information gets out. Free gift cards where scammers impersonate legitimate companies in order to get you to click on links or pop-ups. Fake charities where money is collected for fraudulent charities and the scammers collect the dough. And puppy scams as people turn to the internet for a forever friend, and lose their dollars without getting a dog.
Social media scams take a chunk of change from holiday spenders too, including fake online Secret Santas. Meza said, “How would you like to pay it forward? How would you like to get involved by the next person’s gift? But in the end, the mail service considers it fraud is illegal. It’s a pyramid scheme.”
JEREMY BAKER