If you’re planning to stay in a hotel sometime soon, keep an ear out for fishy phone calls in the early morning.
The Better Business Bureau issued a nationwide alert due to an increase in hotel phishing scams involving credit cards.
According to reports from several victims from a hotel in Dallas, someone called their hotel room late at night or early in the morning posing as a front desk employee. They’d say that the computer system in the hotel had crashed or glitched, and they needed credit card and personal information in order to charge for their room.
The victims, often half-asleep and groggy, gave the credit card info without knowing what was going on.
Tom Stevens, president of the Better Business Bureau of Northeast Florida, says as a rule of thumb you shouldn’t be giving out that kind of information over the phone anyway.
“You don’t give out the credit card number to someone over the phone unless you initiated the call and you know who you’re calling.”
The BBB says most hotel employees won’t call your room after 9 pm. Stevens says if you get a call asking for card information, tell them you’ll meet them in person.
“The first thing you do in the event you get that phone call, you say ‘Ok, I’ll be right down to the front desk,’ and you hang up the phone and go down to the front desk…and the front desk will look at you and say ‘What are you talking about? We didn’t just call you,’ and you’ll know it was a scam.”
If you do fall victim to one of these scams, it’s important to cancel your credit card right away, as well as calling to report fraud and identity theft.
(source : http://www.wokv.com/)
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