| How It Works |
| •You stumble onto a travel booking site that offers exclusive vacation deals, often for far below market value.•You find a posting for a luxurious vacation rental listing at a lower-than-expected price.•Your rental car search lands you on what appears to be the jackpot — a site offering great prices on hard-to-find rental cars.•You’re using a popular vacation rental app, and the host asks you to pay upfront and through a means that is off the platform. |
| What You Should Know |
| •Scammers create bogus travel sites that often appear high up in search rankings (because they buy paid promotion) — the sites often even use the same language, colors and logos from legitimate sites.•Criminals create fake vacation rental listings that are often stolen from real listings and then altered — an unusually low price could be a sign that it’s not legitimate.•Shady rental car sites may appear like those of real companies, but the deals are fake — the thieves who set them up will simply take your money and then disappear.•A host that asks you to pay for your rental home outside of the app is most likely a scammer. |
| What You Should Do |
| •Be skeptical of any pitch that offers steep discounts on travel and accommodations.•Vet travel reservation sites before you book. Conduct a web search on the company name (along with the word “scam” or “complaint” or “review”) in search of other people’s experiences.•Pay for travel reservations and bookings with a credit card, which offers greater protections than other forms of payment.•When renting a car online, type in the web address versus using a search engine to reduce the chance of accidentally landing on a look-a-like site.•When using a vacation rental app, be suspicious if the host wants you to pay off-platform. For example, Airbnb only allows this for certain fees (e.g., local taxes), and Vrbo states that payments outside its checkout form are not eligible for its “Book With Confidence” guarantee. |