In this digital Era, Nothing is impossible and with this advantage here come certain drawbacks as well. We all know how gift cards are becoming more popular these days and their market is likely to grow in the coming future as well. As the popularity of gift cards is increasing day by day, the scams related to this is also grasping the speed. The things that are making these gift cards very popular with consumers, as well as retailers, also make them tempting to scammers and organized lawbreakers.
However, the good thing is that you can avoid some of these scams very easily by detecting them soon. Today we are going to discuss the same thing to you to help you out to spot these scams and how you can fix them. If you also a gift card holder then you must read this post till the end to enlighten your knowledge regarding gift card scams.
How Scammers Exploit Gift Cards?
Gift cards are among the most common and popular tools for scammers to exploit. Any cardholder or merchant can be hit by gift card scams as these organized criminals or fraudsters uses several methods to exploit gift cards. These scams can range from simple frauds where merchants stuck with chargebacks to big frauds where merchant gift card records or information have been hacked. Here we have listed certain ways through which these fraudsters scam your gift cards, so let’s check it out.
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Buying Gift Cards Online With Stolen Card’s Database
This is considered to be one of the most common gift card scam where the fraudster uses stolen credit card databases for buying the gift cards via online. They then later resell these cards online in return for the cash. After this when the credit card holder finds out the charge made through their database, the merchant who sold those gift cards have to chargeback the amount.
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Buying Gift Cards By Someone’s Bank Account Credentials
These scammers hack the data of someone’s bank or online shopping account with the help of which they can purchase many gift cards. They later spend them or cash them out immediately in advance of they are even caught.
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Hacking Merchants For Stealing Gift Card Numbers At Once
The hackers can purchase a bunch of gift card numbers from the retailers by hacking merchants from where they can steal several important databases that they use to buy a lot of cards at once and then reselling them.
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Email Scams & Converting Points Into Digital Gift Cards
Hackers or spammers can exploit gift cards in many different ways. They can hack someone’s credit card credentials online or else by someone’s stolen credit card. By hacking these stolen credit card or bank accounts, they easily convert the points into digital gift cards. The Email scammers usually lookout for targeting the employees of a company by posing as a company executive, and ask the employees to quickly but the gift cards and asking the numbers from each card as well.
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Requesting For A Gift Card As A Substitute For The Refund Or Exchange
Whenever a scammer buys something online with the information recorded with the stolen card, they immediately cancel the order after getting approved. In return, they ask for a refund on a gift card. Usually, these cards can’t be traced due to which the merchant gets a chargeback from the cardholder whose stolen credit card has been used in this process.
How You Can Protect Yourself from Gift Card Scams?
It may sometimes hard to detect gift card scams on time but it can be prevented by following some simple process in advance. The digital world is progressing and so as the methods of these fraudsters so sometimes it hard to detect or prevent such scams. Here we have listed some very important instructions that merchants or cardholders must consider in order to reduce the chances of their gift card fraud risk.
Avoid Fake Calls & Emails
If you get any call claiming to be a government agency or credit card company and ask you to make the payment then you should not trust these fake calls. Just hung up such calls or delete such emails that are asking you for making payments. Not even a well-known company nor government organization demands for such kind of payments, so the callers are no one just the scammers. Don’t even call back or respond to their given numbers/ links or emails. If you want to ask the queries regarding such calls and emails then contact the official customer service number provided by your Gift or Credit Card Company.
Buy Gift Cards Only From Trustworthy Resellers
One common mistake that most cardholders do is that they purchase discount gift cards from any seller but instead you should only buy these gift cards from a well-known or trustworthy reseller. They must be particularly the ones that offer you customer service and will also provide you with a money-back guarantee on the acquisitions.
Monitor The Brand Listed On Gift Card
There are many brands that are linked to the gift cards and many of these brands are those which are facing insolvency. Therefore, you must check the brand status on the gift card trading sites in order to detect and shut down the brand impersonation scam.
Save & Check the Activation Receipt
When you buy a gift card, it is your responsibility to save the purchase as well as the activation receipt up to your gift card has been redeemed. Make sure to check the number that has been listed on the card and check whether this number matches the number listed on the activation receipt. If these two numbers differ and don’t match, then you should immediately alert the manager regarding this.
Tracking Gift Card Database
This step is mainly for retailers who provide gift cards to their customers. They can actually track each one from buying to reclamation. With the help of tracking this data, they can get to detect any strange activity, such as immediate activation and use, for inquiry.