DENVER — Scrolling through listing photos for your next dream vacation, you may start to wonder if the incredible images are real at all. They may not be.
As travel-related scams increase, cybersecurity experts are highlighting sophisticated methods used by fraudsters to dupe travelers.
Denver7 Investigates recently received a message from Karyn, who said she was scammed by a person she thought was a United Airlines representative. She subsequently gave her credit card information.
"This person called us and tried to get $10,000 out of us," Karyn's voicemail revealed. "I disputed the charge, but it was an absolute scam."
Fortunately, Karyn got her money back, but many others are not so lucky. The FTC reports Americans lost more than $274 million last year in travel-related scams.
Robert Elliott, director of engineering for the West at Check Point, highlighted a rise in fraudulent vacation-themed domain registrations detected by his company's software.
"All of those domains are used in phishing campaigns," Elliott said, highlighting the rise in fraudulent vacation-themed domain registrations. "They're trying to get you to click on something that you shouldn't click on."
Elliott showed examples of fake Airbnb forms and Booking.com phishing emails, as well as a scam that looks like a CaptCHA, but if you follow the verification steps, you download malware onto your computer to allow scammers to take control of it remotely.
Scammers are also utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to craft convincing but fake travel sites and listings.
"The scammers are using AI to generate false images that look like real places," Elliott told Denver7 Investigates. "They're using tools like DALL-E to generate amazing photographs of places that don't exist. They then create actual listings with these false images and fake reviews on Airbnb."
There are ways to protect yourself from these scams:
- Hover over hyperlinks in emails before clicking to see if they lead to a suspicious address, or type the real site's URL directly into your browser.
- Pay with your credit card instead of wiring money or sending cash, as this offers more protection.
- Double-check the listing’s address on Google Maps to ensure it’s a real location.
- Enable multi-factor authentication on your accounts for an additional layer of security.
