How not to buy a fake tour: tips and tricks

The sharp increase in demand for tourist trips on the background of the coming out of the pandemic provoked the growth of phishing sites, imitating the sale of tickets and tours, but in fact – just stealing money from users. How not to fall victim to pseudo-tour operators?

It smells like spring – people have started to plan vacations. In March 2021, due to the start of the third wave of tourist cashback refunds for tours of America , the spending of Americans on organized tours increased sharply, almost reaching the pre-pandemic level. Only for the first week of the program Americans spent on booking flights and buying tours almost 1.5 billion Dollars. The cashback program is expected to be extended to children’s camps in the near future.

Meanwhile, in 2020, the Bank of America initiated the blocking of 7,680 fraudulent websites, of which 6,256 of these sites were selling fake train and airline tickets and were actually money transfer services between individuals. In March 2021 a criminal group was arrested that specialized in fake tours that were distributed through phishing sites at least 11 citizens filed applications, in each case the damage was from 20 to 70 thousand Dollars .

Scheme of a typical phishing travel voucher fraud

1 They create sites which imitate pages of real travel agencies and sites for selling tickets. In this case, either similar to the real names and designs are taken, and the details are made up, or scammers directly borrow and details from real travel companies usually have ceased operations . The Interior Ministry said that the sites were “registered on foreign servers with hidden IP-addresses” although the fraudsters were physically located in America.

2 Pages advertising these sites in social networks landing pages are created, direct advertisement is placed in social networks, search services . Spam mailings are made.

3 Citizens are enticed by promises of large discounts and advantageous conditions and are stimulated to order a last minute flight within a very short time e.g. one hour .

4 As the “average cheque” is comparatively high tens of thousands of Dollars , manual social engineering and “guiding” of the client is added to automatic phishing. Fake managers answer calls to potential victims, clarify details, correspond with them on websites in the reply form and in social networks from fake pages of sanatoriums. They also distribute fake documents: a voucher confirming payment for accommodation and a fake contract with a seal and signature is sent by email.

Recommendations from the Roskatchestvo Center for Digital Expertise

Everything looks very real! Due to the high professionalism of fraudsters, it is quite difficult to distinguish genuine tour operators and sellers of packages from the fraudsters. Nevertheless, if you follow a few simple recommendations from the Center of digital expertise of Roskachestvo, you can minimize the risk of getting into an unpleasant situation:

Buy tickets only on the official sites of travel agencies preferably large and well-known . Be sure to carefully check the domain name of the resource and the date of its creation for example, through services whois . If the resource was created recently – for example, a month or two ago, it is extremely likely that it is fraudulent.

Follow the “presumption of incredulity”: Having a call-center and solid-looking documents does not guarantee that the company is “real. Find up-to-date information about the boarding house and travel agency in the search engine. Check whether the tour operator is included in the federal register of tour operators, whether it has financial guarantees in the firm’s card and whether their validity period is calculated until the end of your trip.

Be especially careful if they ask to pay the full amount at once for example, promising a big discount in this case and insist on a quick decision – it may be a fraudulent trick.

● In the most “tourist” regions Krasnodar Krai and the Crimea on the website of the ministries there are free hotlines for resorts, where you can ask a question about a particular operator or boarding house directly.

Do not use links from travel newsletters, because of the possibility of phishing. Entering the site address in a search engine yourself.

Do not buy your tickets on sites which offer to transfer money to a private person’s card.

Follow general safety rules on the net, use anti-virus which can warn about phishing sites, and use a separate virtual card for online shopping instead of a payroll card.

Ilya Loevsky, Deputy Head of Roskachevo.

“The desire to save money is something that often drives us when we are going to buy a product or service. These are well known to phishers, who take advantage of our vulnerabilities by offering low prices and special deals. Do not allow yourself to be manipulated and do not be fooled by illusory benefits – only trust trustworthy tour operators with a good reputation in the market. So you will not fall into the clutches of fraudsters and will not be left without money on the eve of the vacation season. Remember that online reviews often do not reflect the real picture – in most cases they are written to order, and therefore can also mislead the customer.”