If it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn’t real! If what you suddenly see on one site is very different to other sites then you should ask – why is that?
Sadly, many leap in as they think there is a real bargain.
In June Booking.com’s chief information security officer Marnie Wilking told the BBC that the platform had seen an increase in scams of ‘anywhere from 500 to 900 per cent’.
A key area of concern is AI Chat bots like Chat GPT which Wilking says scammers are utilising.
The attackers are definitely using AI to launch attacks that mimic emails far better than anything that they’ve done to date.
Sunshine Coast property owners Katie and Rob list their home on Airbnb and when two travellers arrived unexpectedly at their door they knew something was up.
The guests who arrived told Katie and Rob that they had booked on Booking.com, which they had never listed the property on.
The travellers not only had nowhere to stay but they had also been scammed after providing their bank details to secure the ‘booking’.
“We had a couple crying because they were so devastated,” Katie told the ABC.
“We couldn’t do anything to help them other than be kind, try and explain it and get them to change their credit cards.”
Cassandra Cross, a professor at Queensland University of Technology said accommodation scams are on the up because of how many online bookings are made.
“We are all expected to be on these platforms booking and putting in our credit card and personal information,” she said.
“That is what offenders know that we do and that is why they are popular and really quite effective.”
In 2023 the ACCC ‘Scamwatch’ platform recording 363 reports of scams involving Booking.com with over $337,000 losses reported.
The figures represent a near 600 per cent increase on 2022’s numbers – 53 reported scams involving Booking.com.
“There is nothing to stop an offender creating listings or copying listings onto other sites, and that is what makes this a difficult and challenging scam sometimes to identify,” Cross continued.
