Source::Breaking Travel News
With rapidly changing and evolving travel rules all over the country, the widespread pent up demand for holidays by the public after the months of lockdown has created the perfect condition for scammers and fraudsters to scam and deceive customers to steal money and gain bank details. Which?, a British-based accountability country has warned that COVID-19 has provided new opportunities for scam artists to exploit victims.
Scammers have been cold-calling travellers and passengers, imitating as airlines, travel agents and banks claiming their bank details and personal information to process the fund. Many scammers even try to appear more legitimate by spoofing trustworthy phone numbers and finding out-booking details. Many people have used this to gain bank details to take out money or sell that information for more money.
Entire rogue companies are selling fake flights and using fake adverts to promote popular stays that have a lot of demand to entice future passengers to use their site. Customers are deceived to click through a website to book and pay for a flight or a destination that doesn't exist. The customers can only find out about the scam when they come to the airport only to be unable to check-in.
Even Brexit and vaccination regulations have been taken advantage of to get the advantage of gullible people. An email that looks like coming from NHS to verify their vaccination status, is a phishing attempt to fish out more information. Which? has seen firms charging people for passenger locator forms which are being distributed free by the government. Moreover, many people are seen paying for paying GHIC (Global Health Insurance Card) which is free and supposed to replace EHIC after Brexit. International Driving permits can also be seen being sold for Spain worth 49$ even though the Post Office distributes them for only about 6$.
Which? has been combating this by elucidating on the issues and the tactics scammers and impersonators use to deceive people to the general public. They also track the scams and contact online platforms, banks and telecoms companies to make sure that their systems aren't being used to scam and target victims.
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