TAMPA, Fla. — With the summer season approaching, scams are on the rise.
That’s according to cybersecurity experts.
Tampa Bay 28 spoke with Abhishek Karnik, who is the head of Threat Research and Intelligence for McAfee.
He’s been tracking the increase.
“These scams can come at you from many, many different angles,” said Karnik.
He’s seeing more of the usual phishing scams. Impersonation scams are continuing too, those are getting harder to detect with the use of artificial intelligence.
“AI tools have been improving at an incredible pace but also the scammers have been utilizing tools… These tools and the usage of these tools in the arsenal of scammers is also evolving,” said Karnik.
There’s been an uptick in QR code scams as well.
Some of the biggest scams experts are seeing as we head into the summer, are travel-related scams, especially as people are on tight budgets.
“With people getting ready for travel, everybody still wants to travel, things getting a little more expensive, people are going to look for those deals and when they look for those deals they have to be extra careful,” said Karnik.
People are booking trips without verifying the websites.
“Even if scammers aren’t able to go through with the entire scam sometimes they’re able to get at least the right amount of information from you that sets you up for the next scam. Essentially, your name, address, and phone number. Any of that information being provided to the scammers can help them create very hyper-personalized scams for the next time around,” said Karnik.
Scammers are sending fake emails and texts, pretending to be an airline or a hotel, offering an insane limited-time deal— causing people to enter their personal information on fraudulent websites.
“Any time somebody is pressurizing you to take that big deal, that’s definitely a red flag,” said Karnik.
McAfee warns you should be especially wary of emails claiming to be from third-party travel websites, as they tend to be spoofed the most.
McAfee uncovered that Tripadvisor was the most commonly impersonated travel app, cloned at roughly 3 times the rate of similar platforms like Kayak and Expedia, according to recent McAfee research.
“It’s not uncommon to see some of these very popular travel tools being impersonated. So Kayak, Booking, I think Tripadvisor was higher up on the list this time… That’s a trusted brand and therefore it’s also a very targeted brand in terms of what the scammers might attempt to impersonate,” said Karnik.
The best thing you can do is go directly to the website you want to book through by searching it yourself, instead of clicking any links.
“Payments is another one, right? If someone is trying to get you to pay through sort of an unexpected channel like crypto or a gift card those are typically red flags as well,” said Karnik.
He also warns about posting about your trip on social media.
He encourages you to wait until your trip is over to do it, because scammers are now using the information you post along with AI tools to create more personalized ways to trick you.
“If they know that you’re traveling number one, and if they know where you’re traveling, you know they can personalize the scam even more. They can send you that text message saying 'Hey, your Amex transaction failed while you were traveling in Tulum,' or wherever you were traveling,” said Karnik.
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