Vacation season is heating up and so are the scammers. You might not even know it until your credit card is compromised or you show up for your flight, hotel, car rental, or tour and there is no reservation for you.
It often starts when you use Google or other search engines to do your travel planning. Scam travel sites are prolific in the search results and they use ads to rank higher in the searches.
Scammers take advantage of searches such as “cheap hotels in …” and “cheap car rentals.” They offer great prices to lure you in. Everything seems legitimate until your travel starts or fraudulent charges show up on your credit cards.
Tips for safely planning trips:
- Only use official websites and travel consolidators: Google Flights has great comparisons of airlines and airfares. Expedia.com is good for car rentals. Hotels.com for hotels. If you are unsure of a link, please send it to me and I’ll try to see if it’s legitimate.
- NEVER select a website or phone number from “Sponsored Results” or “Advertiser” because these websites can be owned by scammers. Always scroll past the ads to get to the regular search results for official websites that have been around for a while. And only trust phone numbers on the official websites.
- NEVER pay for travel on non-secure payment sites (only go to sites with “https” in the URL), with gift cards, or through cash platforms such as Venmo and Zelle.
- NEVER use a debit card for travel. Scammers can drain your checking account in less than a minute. Note that credit card protections only exist for a certain period of time, so if it’s been past 90 days since booking, you may not receive any money back from a scam or a travel partner who goes out of business.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is a scam.