Ready for it or not, the holidays have arrived. No matter your feelings about the holidays, one thing is sure: the spirit of the season is here.

Whether you’re planning for family gatherings or a relatively silent holiday season, it helps to be vigilant against scams. Here are a few of the most common scams you might encounter this season—and what you can do to stay SAFE.

Gift Card Scams

Gift cards have become a ubiquitous component of holiday shopping. It’s a relatively quick and easy way to give gifts to relatives, so it only makes sense that such an item can also be part of your shopping list.

Scammers know how easy it is to use gift cards, and the unfortunate truth is that they can’t wait to steal from you, either.

Scammers might try to approach you through a text message or voicemail to get you to buy a gift card and surrender the payment information to them. They might pose as a relative or loved one and trick you into purchasing a gift card for them where you give away the payment information and security code.

A scammer might get you to buy one or several gift cards under many pretenses. These may include:

• Trying to pay off a debt.
• Imitating a boss or a friend.
• Demanding to pay off fees.
• Trying to pay off a loan.
  

If someone is trying to get you to buy a gift card for them, stop and assess the situation. This might be a scammer trying to swindle you from your hard-earned money. Try to verify where the scammer is coming from, and don’t be so quick to agree to make any transfers.

Gift card scams are notoriously tricky to track, and if you fall for one, it is doubtful that you will get your money back.

Delivery Scams

In today’s always-online world, there’s a pretty good chance that you depend on online retailers and delivery services to get what you want. Over the past few years, it has become widespread for consumers to rely on the mail to deliver the things they want, and their demand has only increased during the holidays.

There’s a good chance that you depend on delivery services for various things, including online orders. If you shop online a lot, then it makes sense to be weary of communications that claim to be from your mail carrier.

Delivery scams are commonly delivered through email or text correspondence. Both might get you to click a link and input personally identifying information.

If a mail carrier tries to get you to click on a link and surrender personal information, STOP and think. Mail carriers rarely try to contact you through email or text to ask for information. It’s even more suspicious if they try to ask for payment information.

If a mail carrier contacts you and they ask for things like login or payment information, you are likely being targeted by a scam. Ignore requests for payment and contact the mail carrier directly to resolve any possible interruptions to your deliveries.

Shopping Scams Through Social Media

Holiday shopping can be stressful. In your quest to find the perfect gift for your loved ones, you may be tempted to browse your social media feeds for gift ideas.

Unfortunately, social media ads are being bought by anyone with the money to pay for them. That means less-reputable companies are qualified to take up ad space to promote their scams and get their victims to surrender information.

Always be wary of ads that, once clicked, ask for your personal information from the jump. Even if you aren’t surrendering any payment information, scammers can still sell your personal information to the highest bidder, which can lead to flooding your inbox with scams and false promises.

Worse, ads that you find on social media can lead to “spoofed websites.” It isn’t uncommon for social media ads to link to sites that look like legitimate retailers, only for them to lead you to something less than legitimate.

When visiting websites from social media ads, always verify the website and determine if they can be trusted. Check the security certificate of suspicious sites and verify that a trusted source has vetted them.

Generally, shopping for items linked by a social media ad is never a good idea. You are better off visiting the site firsthand and shopping from there. Scammers can buy ad space to promote their spoofed sites, which can cause people to fall for bad deals unknowingly.

This holiday season will allow you to shop more easily than before, but it can also leave you open to scams. Remember that it is always better to stay SAFE than sorry. View our Scam and Fraud Education page to learn about the latest scams.