Scammers Are Out To Ruin Your Vacation- Here's How To Stop Them
It is July and many of us are happily looking forward to the summer vacations that we look forward to all year, however, scammers are looking forward to scamming us with a variety of scams that can ruin your vacation.. Here are some common vacation scams to avoid.
HR Department Email
This scam starts with an email that appears to come from your company's HR Department luring you to click on a link to submit your request for vacation time. Clicking on the link can either cause you to download dangerous malware that can lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft or luring you into providing your online credentials at work in order to get access to your company's computers and data.
How to Avoid
Never click on a link or provide personal information in response to an email or text message unless you have confirmed that the communication is legitimate. Scammers use email addresses that may appear to be legitimate, and it is easy for a scammer to make a text message appear as if it is coming from a trusted phone. If you get a communication that appears to come from your HR department, contact them directly through an email or phone number that you know is legitimate.
Home Rental Scam
Renting vacation homes rather than going to hotels has been increasingly popular in recent years. There are many excellent websites such as VRBO and Homeaway that offer wonderful vacation homes. Many people will also go to Craigslist and other similar sites. These websites can be easy and efficient ways to find a great vacation home.
Unfortunately, they are also a great way for scam artists to steal money from unwary people looking for a vacation home. The scam generally starts with a listing that looks quite legitimate and there is a good reason for that. The listing is often a real online listing that has been copied by the scammer who merely inserts his or her name and contact information. The price is usually very low which attracts a lot of potential renters. The potential renters are sometimes told that the owner is out of the country and that there are many people interested in the property so if the tenant wants to be considered for renting it, the tenant has to wire money to the landlord somewhere outside of the country. Wiring money is a preferred method of payment for scammers because it is all but impossible for the victim to get their money back once they realize they have been scammed.
How to Avoid
There are a number of red flags to look for in vacation home rental scams. First, as always, if the price is too good to be true, it usually is just that - not true. Also be wary of landlords who are out of the country.
Never send your payment by a wire transfer, cryptocurrency, Zelle, Venmo or a cashier's check. Use a credit card, PayPal or any other payment system from which you can retrieve your funds if the transaction is fraudulent. It is usually best to deal with websites that specialize in vacation homes, but you must remember that they cannot possibly monitor every listing to ensure that it is legitimate.
A simple way to determine if the listing is a scam is to check out who really is the owner by going online to the tax assessor's office of the city or town where the property is located and look up who the real owner is. If it doesn't match the name of the person attempting to rent you the home, you should not go through with the rental. Also Google the name of the owner with the word "scam" next to his or her name and see if anything comes up.
Hotel Room Service
Some scams are just so simple and effective that they remind us why scam artists are indeed the only criminals we refer to as artists. An old scam that is still being used effectively by scammers involves a flyer under the door to your hotel room that purportedly is an advertisement for a local pizza parlor. The flyer gives a telephone number for the pizza parlor which will conveniently deliver to your room All you need to do is call the number, give them a credit card and they will promptly send you your fresh pizza or other food. Unfortunately, it is a scam. The scammers have gone through the hotel and put their flyers under the doors. They then just wait for the telephone calls and steal your credit card number.
How to Avoid
A good rule to follow is not to order any food from a restaurant that puts flyers under the door of your hotel or motel room. In regard to the pizza parlor or other restaurant you can confirm online or even with a quick call to the clerk at the front desk as to whether the particular restaurant described in the flyer is legitimate and whether indeed the telephone number is their actual number. Sometimes scammers use the name of a real restaurant, but substitute their own telephone number. Never order or provide your credit card unless you have independently confirmed both that the restaurant is real and the telephone number is accurate.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News24
37 minutes ago
- News24
Wainstein murder trial: Solemn moment as Andre Naude's death certificate handed in
Security was stepped up for the resumption of the Brian Wainstein murder trial in the Western Cape High Court on Monday following the hit on murder-accused security boss Andre Naude.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Creating realistic deepfakes is getting easier than ever. Fighting back may take even more AI
WASHINGTON (AP) — The phone rings. It's the secretary of state calling. Or is it? For Washington insiders, seeing and hearing is no longer believing, thanks to a spate of recent incidents involving deepfakes impersonating top officials in President Donald Trump's administration. Digital fakes are coming for corporate America, too, as criminal gangs and hackers associated with adversaries including North Korea use synthetic video and audio to impersonate CEOs and low-level job candidates to gain access to critical systems or business secrets. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, creating realistic deepfakes is easier than ever, causing security problems for governments, businesses and private individuals and making trust the most valuable currency of the digital age. Responding to the challenge will require laws, better digital literacy and technical solutions that fight AI with more AI. 'As humans, we are remarkably susceptible to deception,' said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and founder of the tech firm Pindrop Security. But he believes solutions to the challenge of deepfakes may be within reach: 'We are going to fight back.' AI deepfakes become a national security threat This summer, someone used AI to create a deepfake of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an attempt to reach out to foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor over text, voice mail and the Signal messaging app. In May someone impersonated Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Another phony Rubio had popped up in a deepfake earlier this year, saying he wanted to cut off Ukraine's access to Elon Musk's Starlink internet service. Ukraine's government later rebutted the false claim. The national security implications are huge: People who think they're chatting with Rubio or Wiles, for instance, might discuss sensitive information about diplomatic negotiations or military strategy. 'You're either trying to extract sensitive secrets or competitive information or you're going after access, to an email server or other sensitive network," Kinny Chan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm QiD, said of the possible motivations. Synthetic media can also aim to alter behavior. Last year, Democratic voters in New Hampshire received a robocall urging them not to vote in the state's upcoming primary. The voice on the call sounded suspiciously like then-President Joe Biden but was actually created using AI. Their ability to deceive makes AI deepfakes a potent weapon for foreign actors. Both Russia and China have used disinformation and propaganda directed at Americans as a way of undermining trust in democratic alliances and institutions. Steven Kramer, the political consultant who admitted sending the fake Biden robocalls, said he wanted to send a message of the dangers deepfakes pose to the American political system. Kramer was acquitted last month of charges of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate. 'I did what I did for $500,' Kramer said. 'Can you imagine what would happen if the Chinese government decided to do this?' Scammers target the financial industry with deepfakes The greater availability and sophistication of the programs mean deepfakes are increasingly used for corporate espionage and garden variety fraud. 'The financial industry is right in the crosshairs," said Jennifer Ewbank, a former deputy director of the CIA who worked on cybersecurity and digital threats. 'Even individuals who know each other have been convinced to transfer vast sums of money.' In the context of corporate espionage, they can be used to impersonate CEOs asking employees to hand over passwords or routing numbers. Deepfakes can also allow scammers to apply for jobs — and even do them — under an assumed or fake identity. For some this is a way to access sensitive networks, to steal secrets or to install ransomware. Others just want the work and may be working a few similar jobs at different companies at the same time. Authorities in the U.S. have said that thousands of North Koreans with information technology skills have been dispatched to live abroad, using stolen identities to obtain jobs at tech firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The workers get access to company networks as well as a paycheck. In some cases, the workers install ransomware that can be later used to extort even more money. The schemes have generated billions of dollars for the North Korean government. Within three years, as many as 1 in 4 job applications is expected to be fake, according to research from Adaptive Security, a cybersecurity company. 'We've entered an era where anyone with a laptop and access to an open-source model can convincingly impersonate a real person,' said Brian Long, Adaptive's CEO. 'It's no longer about hacking systems — it's about hacking trust.' Experts deploy AI to fight back against AI Researchers, public policy experts and technology companies are now investigating the best ways of addressing the economic, political and social challenges posed by deepfakes. New regulations could require tech companies to do more to identify, label and potentially remove deepfakes on their platforms. Lawmakers could also impose greater penalties on those who use digital technology to deceive others — if they can be caught. Greater investments in digital literacy could also boost people's immunity to online deception by teaching them ways to spot fake media and avoid falling prey to scammers. The best tool for catching AI may be another AI program, one trained to sniff out the tiny flaws in deepfakes that would go unnoticed by a person. Systems like Pindrop's analyze millions of datapoints in any person's speech to quickly identify irregularities. The system can be used during job interviews or other video conferences to detect if the person is using voice cloning software, for instance. Similar programs may one day be commonplace, running in the background as people chat with colleagues and loved ones online. Someday, deepfakes may go the way of email spam, a technological challenge that once threatened to upend the usefulness of email, said Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop's CEO. 'You can take the defeatist view and say we're going to be subservient to disinformation," he said. 'But that's not going to happen.' David Klepper, The Associated Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Associated Press
2 hours ago
- Associated Press
Creating realistic deepfakes is getting easier than ever. Fighting back may take even more AI
WASHINGTON (AP) — The phone rings. It's the secretary of state calling. Or is it? For Washington insiders, seeing and hearing is no longer believing, thanks to a spate of recent incidents involving deepfakes impersonating top officials in President Donald Trump's administration. Digital fakes are coming for corporate America, too, as criminal gangs and hackers associated with adversaries including North Korea use synthetic video and audio to impersonate CEOs and low-level job candidates to gain access to critical systems or business secrets. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, creating realistic deepfakes is easier than ever, causing security problems for governments, businesses and private individuals and making trust the most valuable currency of the digital age. Responding to the challenge will require laws, better digital literacy and technical solutions that fight AI with more AI. 'As humans, we are remarkably susceptible to deception,' said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and founder of the tech firm Pindrop Security. But he believes solutions to the challenge of deepfakes may be within reach: 'We are going to fight back.' AI deepfakes become a national security threat This summer, someone used AI to create a deepfake of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an attempt to reach out to foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor over text, voice mail and the Signal messaging app. In May someone impersonated Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Another phony Rubio had popped up in a deepfake earlier this year, saying he wanted to cut off Ukraine's access to Elon Musk's Starlink internet service. Ukraine's government later rebutted the false claim. The national security implications are huge: People who think they're chatting with Rubio or Wiles, for instance, might discuss sensitive information about diplomatic negotiations or military strategy. 'You're either trying to extract sensitive secrets or competitive information or you're going after access, to an email server or other sensitive network,' Kinny Chan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm QiD, said of the possible motivations. Synthetic media can also aim to alter behavior. Last year, Democratic voters in New Hampshire received a robocall urging them not to vote in the state's upcoming primary. The voice on the call sounded suspiciously like then-President Joe Biden but was actually created using AI. Their ability to deceive makes AI deepfakes a potent weapon for foreign actors. Both Russia and China have used disinformation and propaganda directed at Americans as a way of undermining trust in democratic alliances and institutions. Steven Kramer, the political consultant who admitted sending the fake Biden robocalls, said he wanted to send a message of the dangers deepfakes pose to the American political system. Kramer was acquitted last month of charges of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate. 'I did what I did for $500,' Kramer said. 'Can you imagine what would happen if the Chinese government decided to do this?' Scammers target the financial industry with deepfakes The greater availability and sophistication of the programs mean deepfakes are increasingly used for corporate espionage and garden variety fraud. 'The financial industry is right in the crosshairs,' said Jennifer Ewbank, a former deputy director of the CIA who worked on cybersecurity and digital threats. 'Even individuals who know each other have been convinced to transfer vast sums of money.' In the context of corporate espionage, they can be used to impersonate CEOs asking employees to hand over passwords or routing numbers. Deepfakes can also allow scammers to apply for jobs — and even do them — under an assumed or fake identity. For some this is a way to access sensitive networks, to steal secrets or to install ransomware. Others just want the work and may be working a few similar jobs at different companies at the same time. Authorities in the U.S. have said that thousands of North Koreans with information technology skills have been dispatched to live abroad, using stolen identities to obtain jobs at tech firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The workers get access to company networks as well as a paycheck. In some cases, the workers install ransomware that can be later used to extort even more money. The schemes have generated billions of dollars for the North Korean government. Within three years, as many as 1 in 4 job applications is expected to be fake, according to research from Adaptive Security, a cybersecurity company. 'We've entered an era where anyone with a laptop and access to an open-source model can convincingly impersonate a real person,' said Brian Long, Adaptive's CEO. 'It's no longer about hacking systems — it's about hacking trust.' Experts deploy AI to fight back against AI Researchers, public policy experts and technology companies are now investigating the best ways of addressing the economic, political and social challenges posed by deepfakes. New regulations could require tech companies to do more to identify, label and potentially remove deepfakes on their platforms. Lawmakers could also impose greater penalties on those who use digital technology to deceive others — if they can be caught. Greater investments in digital literacy could also boost people's immunity to online deception by teaching them ways to spot fake media and avoid falling prey to scammers. The best tool for catching AI may be another AI program, one trained to sniff out the tiny flaws in deepfakes that would go unnoticed by a person. Systems like Pindrop's analyze millions of datapoints in any person's speech to quickly identify irregularities. The system can be used during job interviews or other video conferences to detect if the person is using voice cloning software, for instance. Similar programs may one day be commonplace, running in the background as people chat with colleagues and loved ones online. Someday, deepfakes may go the way of email spam, a technological challenge that once threatened to upend the usefulness of email, said Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop's CEO. 'You can take the defeatist view and say we're going to be subservient to disinformation,' he said. 'But that's not going to happen.'
