{"id":2034,"date":"2013-06-07T13:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T17:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2020-02-26T10:40:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T15:40:00","slug":"safe-vacation-booking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/safe-vacation-booking\/2034\/","title":{"rendered":"Stay Safe When Arranging Your Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Internet has revolutionized the way we book our holidays. Unfortunately it is also enabling fraudsters to prey upon people\u2019s desires to have a perfect vacation, so stay vigilant and check everything before spending any money on airline tickets or accommodations.<\/p>\n

\"safebooking_title\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nowadays, it\u2019s common for cybercriminals to send out mass amounts of fake emails that are cleverly disguised as legitimate messages. These are generally fraudulant airlines or other travel-associated organizations, such as agencies, hotels and travel agents. This is part of a larger \u201cmalicious traveler\u201d campaign that occurs during popular business and consumer travel seasons.<\/p>\n

Scammers usually try to do one of the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Steal money, by making you pay for impressively cheap tickets or luxury villas that doesn\u2019t exist or won\u2019t be booked for you<\/li>\n
  2. Steal frequent flyer miles<\/li>\n
  3. Install a Trojan on your computer to steal banking information and other kinds of valuable data<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The first kind of scam became particularly easy to implement thanks to the Internet. It\u2019s quite easy to set up a fake website for a travel agency or make a clone of a popular website like booking.com. It looks exactly like any other online service designed to help a traveler; the only difference is that payment goes to scammers instead of hotels or airlines. You will receive an electronic confirmation, but it is impossible to use it when you begin your vacation. According to an ABTA (UK Travel Association) study<\/a>, the most dangerous bookings are airline tickets, villas and apartments and packaged trips, especially related to sports or religion. All of them have something in common \u2013 you typically pay in advance.<\/p>\n

    A large \u201cmalicious traveler\u201d campaign occurs during popular business and consumer travel seasons.<\/div>\n

    To steal frequent flyer miles, fraudsters send huge amounts of phishing emails that promise more points in a frequent flyer program or offer a supposed prize to victims. In some attacks the customer is asked to re-register on a fake website, which gives cybercriminals the victim\u2019s account information so they can take their miles. By scamming the customer, criminals are able to steal the flyer miles to use as tickets themselves, or sell\/barter them off to other criminals. We saw this in Latin America with airlines in the region and fake American Airlines notifications were also reported in the US.
    \n    \"fake-booking\"<\/a>
    \nOf course, it is easier to trick users into clicking on malicious links when a victim is searching for vacation options. That\u2019s why phishing emails disguised as confirmation emails (like a fake confirmation from US Airways or British Airways). If a user is fooled into clicking on the link, the URL redirects the user to a malicious site that installs a banking Trojan, which infects the computer and steals banking passwords, logins\/credentials. These types of emails can also contain ZIP file attachments asking you to open it to view your confirmation.<\/p>\n

    Booking your vacation in a safe way<\/b><\/p>\n