Scam Customers

Deceivers Mimic British Airlines at X to Scam Customers

News 12 Jun 2024 161 Views

Social media scammers are on the rise again, this time impersonating British airlines. The official companies are being warned as bogus accounts on X ask for personal information from users. 

The consumer association ‘Which?’ said that there are several scam accounts on Twitter, now known as X, that pretend to be major British airlines and trick people every day. The Meta platform is taking too long to take down fake accounts. 

‘Which?’ said that these faux profiles must be suspended completely according to the misleading policy of X. Although the platform previously claimed to take down all the fraudsters. 

Scammers use internet crawlers to find queries from offended or frustrated customers looking for quick answers. They reply to these complaints and ask for private data from customers, which could damage the privacy of global individuals. 

A researcher tested the claim by adding a flight delay query for the official Wizz Air X account, @wizzair. He immediately got a response from two fake accounts that were trying to act genuine. 

“The replies were identical and used a professional tone. The direct message started with ‘apologizing for the inconvenience’ followed by ‘we have forwarded the queries to the concerned department.’ Next, it said to provide a WhatsApp contact number for assistance,” said Which?.

The scammers use a similar method to get personal information and contact details, or they may direct customers to websites that could breach their privacy or credit card data. Users were also asked to provide a compensation or assistance fee for issue resolution. 

Some common fraud accounts are operating as British Airways, Jet2, Tui, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic, Ryanair, and Wizz Air. These airlines, among many others, are asking customers to beware of such scam accounts that demand any personal data. 

“Customers should only contact the official @easyJet channel with a gold verification badge. They must not engage with any other accounts or click links they receive,” said An easyJet spokesperson. 

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