2024-07-06 02:17:44
Fraudsters are always coming up with new ways to rip people off. We’ll show you how they’re currently being ripped off.
There is a real wave of rip-offs currently hitting consumers. Fraudsters are trying to gain access to sensitive data, credit cards and accounts, primarily through digital channels. You can always read the latest scams they are currently using here.
At the checkout in the supermarket, you can often find stands with various gift cards from Amazon, Spotify & Co. Customers should now be careful when buying the small cards. A new scam ensures that the money deposited does not end up on the voucher, but directly in the fraudsters’ account, warns the Erfurt police.
The perpetrators cover the barcodes on the cards with a manipulated version and then hang the vouchers back on the sales stands. When customers pay money into them at the checkout, the money is not deposited on the voucher but on the perpetrators’ account. Customers only notice the fraud when they realize that the voucher cannot be redeemed.
Anyone who has fallen into the trap should “act quickly and report it to the police and also inform the provider that fraud has occurred,” Erfurt police told Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR).
Will customers get their money back? The legal situation is unclear, according to Ralf Reichertz, head of the consumer law department at the Thuringian consumer advice center. However, the consumer advocate believes that the supermarket operator has a responsibility. He must pay the customer the correct amount, he told MDR. He also advises having the barcodes checked carefully at the checkout beforehand.
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is warning of a new form of the grandparent scam. “Artificial intelligence will soon make it possible to perfectly imitate the real voices of grandchildren,” BSI President Claudia Plattner told “Stern”. The person being called will then no longer be able to tell the difference.
Plattner advises consumers to inform their grandparents about these types of deception attempts. “It’s best to practice this situation with grandma and grandpa and agree on a code word that you would say in case of doubt – for example, the name of your first pet,” says the expert.
Last year, the Thuringia Consumer Advice Center warned of this attempted scam. “Pay attention to small irregularities in the voice – such as choppy-sounding fragments of words – in order to unmask a possible scam,” said Ralf Reichertz, head of the consumer law department at the Thuringia Consumer Advice Center at the time.
In the so-called grandparent scam, fraudsters deliberately call older people. They pretend to be their grandchildren and claim to be in an emergency. Sometimes someone calls pretending to be a police officer to increase the credibility of the story and put more pressure on the potential victims.
Amazon has a number of customers in Germany. It is therefore not surprising that users of the platform are repeatedly targeted by fraudsters. An email is currently circulating in which customers are asked to update their payment details. This was reported by the information portal “Mimikama”. The account is allegedly in a “holding loop” – i.e. temporarily blocked – due to “billing problems”.
The email asks you to click on a button to update your payment information and reactivate your account. To underline the supposed urgency of the matter, it says that the data must be updated within 24 hours. This can lead to those affected reacting immediately out of fear of losing their account and thus falling into the scammers’ net.
“Mimikama” points out that there are some elements that reveal the email to be a scam. For example, the Amazon logo is missing and the farewell message only contains the words “Thank you”, which is not what a reputable company would write. Anyone who receives this message should delete it without replying or move it to the spam folder.