2023-07-14 00:33:04
Friday, July 14, 2023, 00:33
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According to various studies, traveling on summer holidays is one of the top priorities of Spanish citizens, above other leisure possibilities. And faced with the extremely high prices that hotels reach, many prefer to rent a home to spend those days off. A perfectly fertile ground for scammers, who use the most diverse tricks with which to scam potential customers.
The National Police, together with Confianza Online (an association created by Autocontrol and Adigital to increase user confidence on the internet) and AirBnB, have come together to provide some guidelines to take into account when booking vacations through a page web or mobile applications.
– Don’t click on links you don’t expect. We have to detect possible emails, SMS or social media posts that may contain links that redirect to web pages designed “to resemble portals with which the user may be familiar.”
– Be wary of suspiciously cheap offers or those that require high deposits. If it’s too good, it may turn out to be fake. You have to “be wary of offers that combine excessively low prices with very attractive images or accommodation.”
– Pay by card and through the platform. It is advisable not to trust those who propose to make the payment “off the platform or through companies dedicated to sending money, bank checks or postal orders”.
Clues that lead us to suspect the landlord
There are certain clues to detect possible scammers, they warn from the agreement created by the National Police, Confianza Online and AirBnB:
– He usually says that he is abroad. Whether he is Spanish or foreign, “he tends to say that he does not live nearby. He can give more explanations to prove it and even ask for an international transfer ».
– Too professional appearance. He could try to usurp our identity by sending us a rental contract and requesting a copy of the ID “even in an initial phase of the reservation.”
– Always in a hurry. Try to get a quick response, giving a 24-hour deadline, or ensuring that you have other tenants about to book.
– Request the payment of a deposit in advance. It is common for him to ask us for a bank transfer to secure the reservation, “promising to refund the money if it doesn’t work”.
-He says he works for an official company. “To make you feel safe, you can claim to be associated with a legitimate company like AirBnB.”
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