08 Dec 2024 - AJ
I am a difficult person to buy for, so naturally my family tends to give me gift cards and this kind of scam is one I’m very familiar with.
I hope that the things that I’ve mentioned this week help; if not, ‘gift card drain scam’ is easy to search.
Now, when I’m usually talking about gift cards here, it’s because scammers like to trick their victims into buying them (and why does the IRS need $600 in Apple giftcards, pray tell?), but this week’s scam takes advantage of consumers trying to buy presents. These people aren’t trying to avoid getting arrested or helping a supposedly jailed relative - they’re just trying to be kind.
It’s why it’s important to buy your gift cards from a safe source. The gift card rack in the middle of the store is the most risky place, while gift cards at the check out counter are safer (but not completely safe, especially in large stores with multiple registers). I’ve taught my family to buy either from online or directly from the checkout people. So far we haven’t gotten taken advantage of.
That being said, there are the hacker types that pull data about unloaded cards, but that’s not something that your average consumer would know how to avoid - heck, I wouldn’t know how to avoid that and I’m pretty savvy.