Gift cards remain a popular item during the holidays, and fraudsters take advantage and reap millions of dollars from unsuspecting consumers.
Since gift cards are sold everywhere, from grocery stores to retailers, they are often easy last-minute gifts.
And because scamming gift cards is not very challenging, it is a common fraud and increases during Christmas, Timothy Morris, chief security adviser at Tanium, the Kirkland, Wash., provider of converged endpoint management, told TheStreet.
For scammers it’s as simple as urging people to buy and send them gift cards.
“During the holidays, there has traditionally been an uptick in this activity,” he said. “Criminals aren’t known for wasting time on what doesn’t work, and unfortunately this scam is relatively easy to execute, making it quite common.”
Gift-card scams are one of the most prevalent cyberthreats, beginning as so-called phishing attacks in which cybercriminals pose as legitimate businesses or government agencies, Darren Guccione, chief executive of Keeper Security, the Chicago provider of cybersecurity software, told TheStreet.
The scammers also use fear, threats and lies to persuade and coerce their victims into purchasing gift cards.
“Scammers don’t discriminate, and people of all ages fall prey to these schemes, costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars each year,” Guccione said.
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