Your Money ; Scam Alert
Five gifts you don’t want
Holiday Hoaxes By Sid Kirchheimer
For you, it’s the season of giving. For scammers, it’s the ideal time for tak- ing. Here’s how you can protect your
money and identity:
Shopping shenanigans. Searching online
for popular gifts can lead you to scammer-run websites. Click on a fake company listing from your search results
and you may unleash identity-stealing computer “malware.”
Copycat websites simulating legit retailers also proliferate this
time of year to collect credit
card numbers or sell cheap
counterfeit goods.
Defense: Never click on a
link before you carefully read
its address. Beware of unfamiliar firms or missing letters, misspellings
or other tweaks of a legitimate company’s
name— tiffanyco.mn instead of tiffany.com,
for instance. When paying for an item online,
provide credit card numbers only if a page’s
address begins with “https,” not “http”—the
“s” stands for security.
Gift card grift. Taking gift cards from display
racks, thieves copy or use portable scanners
that can read the codes under the scratch-off
strips. Then they replace the cards
and check toll-free numbers later
to see if the cards were activated
and for how much. Before your
niece can spend the card you gave
her, they beat her to it, using the
card’s number for purchases.
’Tis the
season
to collect
credit card
numbers or
sell cheap
counterfeit
goods.
Sid Kirchheimer is the author of Scam-Proof
Your Life, published by AARP Books/Sterling.
