The landscape of travel scams has evolved, moving beyond the days of
traditional pitfalls like rigged taxi meters or fake gem store visit. In
today's digital era, scammers have taken their schemes online,
targeting the multitude of eager travellers looking to save money when
booking travel.
A significant surge in travel-themed spam emails has been observed,
with Bitdefender Antispam Lab highlighting that only 38% of such emails
from May to July 2023 were genuine marketing, while the rest were
flagged as scams.
Europe leads the chart in receiving these spam emails, accounting for
42% during the May-July period, closely followed by North America at
40%. The US remains the most targeted country, receiving a substantial
39% of the global travel-themed spam, with Ireland (16%), the UK and
Germany (6% each), India and South Africa (5% each), and other countries
trailing behind.
The source of these spam emails varies, with the US contributing 40%
of the total, and the remaining spam hailing from Europe, Asia, and
Africa.
What are giveaways for spam subject lines
An examination of the most used keywords in a sample batch of 1,000
travel-themed spam emails revealed that about 20% of the correspondence
included the words “free gift” or “survey” in the email subject line,
while 8% included the keyword “booking”. Such subject lines, often
accompanied by grammatical errors, were giveaway scams and not
legitimate marketing lures.
Here's a sample of subject lines that fall under the scam category:
- "Unlock your free gift, complete our survey now"
- "You have 1 new United Airlines survey reward ready to claim"
- "Answer our survey questions and get a chance to win flights for your summer travels"
- "You have won a $500 Southwest Airlines gift card"
- "Congratulations, you can get a $100 American Airlines gift card"