Beware of New Scams this Holiday Shopping Season

Admittedly, I am a "Headlines Only" reader when it comes to the news sites. However, on the occasion, they do get my attention. As with the one I am going to talk about here. Now, the word "sneakiest" is what made me read on. I could not resist from sharing this information with the Hubpages community.

Everyone likes getting deals, and no one likes to befall a victim of a fraud. People put so much effort into savvy shopping, yet many forget to look to the other side of the process. I am here to tell people to be aware, educate yourself, it is so important these days. Especially during holiday shopping season!

OK, here comes the list of the newest tricks from the ever-evolving criminals:

1. If you text on your cellphone, this one is for you. Beware of smishing, the term explained well here (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/smishing). Make sure you don't reply to any text message unless you absolutely know its sender. To my understanding, the messages from scammers get really tricky, they disguise themselves as your banks! Luckily, I don't use this service, so I am safe :) On a side note, phishing is still something people should be on lookout for. Personally, I have received an email from "my bank", asking to reset my password. My husband did also, but he happens to be an expert in internet technology. I got a warning in time! The way to check if it is legitimate email is to point the mouse to a link within a text of the email, then look down to the bottom left corner of the screen's status bar. Legitimate message would have a bank's name listed somewhere with the extension of .com. In my case, the extension was .ru which meant the crooks were from Russia. Later, we received a warning from our real bank about an attempted scam.
   
2. Now, skimming is not a new concept, but the advancement in wireless technology has made it easier for crooks to record your information from ATM or gas pump instantaneously. My advice: get withdrawal from a live teller, pay for gas inside, or use credit card (you have to regularly check your account for this one, and know the time frame within which you are to report questionable charges to get reimbursed for them).
3. This one got me by surprise. Did you know that you could buy a gift card, supposedly load the dollar amount on it, give it as a present, and later, to your embarrassment find out it was empty? It is possible! The thieves use handheld scanners available for anyone to purchase, then steal the code and card number, and regularly check to see if money had been added to it. Then spend it before your gift recipient does. How wickedly crafty!

The article goes on to give sound advices on how to be protected from these scams and more.  The one that I really like and attest to is getting a free security software from Microsoft.  We recently downloaded it, and I can say it works just as well as the ones you have to pay money for (a frugal tip for savvy shoppers:)

The link to this article I am referring to is http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/448/the-sneakiest-new-shopping-scams/, if you like to read for yourself, I highly recommend it.