Author: admin

Summer vacation season is upon us, and millions of families are booking accommodations for their dream getaways. But with the surge in travel bookings comes an unfortunate reality: accommodation scams are on the rise, and they’re becoming increasingly sophisticated. As a cybersecurity professional, I’ve seen how devastating these scams can be—not just financially, but emotionally, when your family vacation turns into a nightmare.

The good news? With the right knowledge and proactive measures, you can protect yourself and your family from these predators. Even better, if you do fall victim to a scam, there are specific steps you can take to minimize the damage and potentially recover your losses.

The Harsh Reality: Travel Scams Are Exploding

Travel accommodation fraud has skyrocketed in recent years. Scammers have become expert at creating convincing fake listings on legitimate platforms like Airbnb, Booking.com, and even creating entirely fraudulent websites that mimic well-known hotel chains. They steal photos from real properties, craft compelling descriptions, and even create fake reviews to lure unsuspecting travelers.
What makes these scams particularly insidious is the emotional investment. You’re planning a special family vacation, perhaps saving for months, and the excitement of finding what seems like the “perfect” place clouds your judgment. Scammers exploit this vulnerability ruthlessly.

Red Flags: How to Spot a Scam Before You Book

I can tell you that prevention is always your best defense. Here are the warning signs that should make you pause before clicking “book now”:

Price Red Flags:

• Prices are significantly below market rate for the area
• Requests for payment outside the platform (via wire transfer, gift cards, or cryptocurrency)
• Demands for large upfront payments or full payment before arrival
• No clear cancellation policy or unreasonably strict terms

Property Red Flags:

• Limited or professional-looking photos that seem too perfect
• No street address provided, only general area descriptions
• Lack of recent reviews or reviews that seem fake (overly generic language)
• No contact information for the property beyond the initial booking contact

Booking Site Red Flags:

• Websites with recent domain registration dates
• No secure payment processing (look for “https” and padlock icons)
• Missing contact information, terms of service, or privacy policies
• Unprofessional website design or broken links

Immediate Action Steps If You Discover a Scam

If you’ve fallen victim to an accommodation scam, time is critical. Here’s what you need to do immediately:

Step 1: Document Everything (First 24 Hours)

• Screenshot all communications, listings, confirmation emails, and payment receipts
• Save any photos or descriptions from the original listing
• Note exact dates, times, and methods of all communications
• Create a detailed timeline of events

Step 2: Contact Your Financial Institution (Immediately)

• Call your credit card company or bank to report the fraudulent charge
• Request a chargeback or dispute the transaction
• Ask to have your card frozen if you suspect further unauthorized access
• Credit cards generally offer better fraud protection than debit cards

Step 3: Report to the Platform (Within 24-48 Hours)

• Contact the booking platform’s customer service immediately
• Provide all documentation you’ve gathered
• Follow their specific fraud reporting procedures
• Keep detailed records of all customer service interactions

Step 4: File Official Reports (Within 72 Hours)

• Report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at ReportFraud.ftc.gov
• File a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3.gov)
• Contact local law enforcement if substantial money is involved
• Report to your state’s attorney general’s office

Step 5: Monitor Your Accounts and Identity

• Check all bank and credit card statements for unauthorized charges
• Review your credit reports for any suspicious activity
• Change passwords for any accounts that might have been compromised
• Set up fraud alerts with credit bureaus
• Long-Term Recovery and Protection Strategies
• Beyond immediate damage control, you need to think about long-term protection for you and your family. This is where comprehensive digital protection becomes crucial.

How McAfee Can Protect Your Family from Travel Scams

One of the most effective ways to protect your family from travel scams and other online threats is to implement comprehensive digital protection. Solutions like McAfee’s family protection plans offer multiple layers of security that work together to keep scammers at bay.

Modern family protection services provide several key features that directly combat travel scams:

Real-Time Scam Protection: Advanced scam detection technology automatically identifies and blocks fraudulent websites, phishing emails, and suspicious links before you interact with them. This means if you accidentally click on a fake booking site, the protection software will warn you before you enter any personal information.

Secure VPN for Travel Research: When researching accommodations on public Wi-Fi networks (like those in airports or coffee shops), a VPN encrypts your connection, preventing scammers from intercepting your personal information or redirecting you to fake websites.

Financial Transaction Monitoring: Comprehensive protection plans monitor your bank accounts and credit cards for unusual activity (US only), sending immediate alerts if suspicious transactions occur. This early warning system can help you catch fraudulent charges within hours rather than weeks.

Identity Monitoring and Dark Web Surveillance: These services continuously scan the dark web and other sources where stolen personal information is traded, alerting you if your data appears in places it shouldn’t. This is particularly valuable since accommodation scammers often sell stolen personal information to other criminals.

Personal Data Cleanup: Many protection services help identify and remove your personal information from data broker sites that scammers often use to research potential victims and make their approaches more convincing.
For families, comprehensive protection plans typically cover up to six family members, providing each person with their own monitoring and protection while giving parents oversight of their children’s online activities. With identity theft coverage up to $2 million per family and 24/7 restoration assistance, these services provide both prevention and recovery support.

The Bottom Line: Protection Is Worth the Investment

Twenty years in cybersecurity has taught me that the cost of prevention is always less than the cost of recovery. Whether it’s taking time to properly research accommodations, investing in comprehensive family protection software, or educating your family about scam tactics, these upfront investments pay dividends in peace of mind and financial security.

Travel scams prey on our excitement and trust during what should be joyful family times. By staying vigilant, using proper protection tools, and knowing how to respond quickly if something goes wrong, you can ensure your family’s summer vacation memories are made for all the right reasons.

Remember: legitimate accommodation providers want to build trust and will readily provide verification. If anyone pressures you to skip verification steps or pay through unusual methods, walk away. Your family’s safety and financial security are worth more than any “deal” that seems too good to be true.

Safe travels, and remember—the best vacation is one where the only surprises are pleasant ones.

The post What to Do If You Book a Hotel or Airbnb and It Turns Out to Be a Scam appeared first on McAfee Blog.

The cybersecurity provider also implemented recent fixes in Chromium that affected its Prisma Access Browser

The new NIST guidance sets out 19 example implementations of zero trust using commercial, off-the-shelf technologies

Europol warns of “vicious circle” of data breaches and cybercrime

Erie Insurance reveals suspected network breach and ongoing outage

This is news:

A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travellers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.

Another article.

Late last year, security researchers made a startling discovery: Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns were bypassing moderation on social media platforms by leveraging the same malicious advertising technology that powers a sprawling ecosystem of online hucksters and website hackers. A new report on the fallout from that investigation finds this dark ad tech industry is far more resilient and incestuous than previously known.

In November 2024, researchers at the security firm Qurium published an investigation into “Doppelganger,” a disinformation network that promotes pro-Russian narratives and infiltrates Europe’s media landscape by pushing fake news through a network of cloned websites.

Doppelganger campaigns use specialized links that bounce the visitor’s browser through a long series of domains before the fake news content is served. Qurium found Doppelganger relies on a sophisticated “domain cloaking” service, a technology that allows websites to present different content to search engines compared to what regular visitors see. The use of cloaking services helps the disinformation sites remain online longer than they otherwise would, while ensuring that only the targeted audience gets to view the intended content.

Qurium discovered that Doppelganger’s cloaking service also promoted online dating sites, and shared much of the same infrastructure with VexTrio, which is thought to be the oldest malicious traffic distribution system (TDS) in existence. While TDSs are commonly used by legitimate advertising networks to manage traffic from disparate sources and to track who or what is behind each click, VexTrio’s TDS largely manages web traffic from victims of phishing, malware, and social engineering scams.

BREAKING BAD

Digging deeper, Qurium noticed Doppelganger’s cloaking service used an Internet provider in Switzerland as the first entry point in a chain of domain redirections. They also noticed the same infrastructure hosted a pair of co-branded affiliate marketing services that were driving traffic to sketchy adult dating sites: LosPollos[.]com and TacoLoco[.]co.

The LosPollos ad network incorporates many elements and references from the hit series “Breaking Bad,” mirroring the fictional “Los Pollos Hermanos” restaurant chain that served as a money laundering operation for a violent methamphetamine cartel.

Affiliates who sign up with LosPollos are given JavaScript-heavy “smartlinks” that drive traffic into the VexTrio TDS, which in turn distributes the traffic among a variety of advertising partners, including dating services, sweepstakes offers, bait-and-switch mobile apps, financial scams and malware download sites.

LosPollos affiliates typically stitch these smart links into WordPress websites that have been hacked via known vulnerabilities, and those affiliates will earn a small commission each time an Internet user referred by any of their hacked sites falls for one of these lures.

According to Qurium, TacoLoco is a traffic monetization network that uses deceptive tactics to trick Internet users into enabling “push notifications,” a cross-platform browser standard that allows websites to show pop-up messages which appear outside of the browser. For example, on Microsoft Windows systems these notifications typically show up in the bottom right corner of the screen — just above the system clock.

In the case of VexTrio and TacoLoco, the notification approval requests themselves are deceptive — disguised as “CAPTCHA” challenges designed to distinguish automated bot traffic from real visitors. For years, VexTrio and its partners have successfully tricked countless users into enabling these site notifications, which are then used to continuously pepper the victim’s device with a variety of phony virus alerts and misleading pop-up messages.

According to a December 2024 annual report from GoDaddy, nearly 40 percent of compromised websites in 2024 redirected visitors to VexTrio via LosPollos smartlinks.

ADSPRO AND TEKNOLOGY

On November 14, 2024, Qurium published research to support its findings that LosPollos and TacoLoco were services operated by Adspro Group, a company registered in the Czech Republic and Russia, and that Adspro runs its infrastructure at the Swiss hosting providers C41 and Teknology SA.

Qurium noted the LosPollos and TacoLoco sites state that their content is copyrighted by ByteCore AG and SkyForge Digital AG, both Swiss firms that are run by the owner of Teknology SA, Guilio Vitorrio Leonardo Cerutti. Further investigation revealed LosPollos and TacoLoco were apps developed by a company called Holacode, which lists Cerutti as its CEO.

The apps marketed by Holacode include numerous VPN services, as well as one called Spamshield that claims to stop unwanted push notifications. But in January, Infoblox said they tested the app on their own mobile devices, and found it hides the user’s notifications, and then after 24 hours stops hiding them and demands payment. Spamshield subsequently changed its developer name from Holacode to ApLabz, although Infoblox noted that the Terms of Service for several of the rebranded ApLabz apps still referenced Holacode in their terms of service.

Incredibly, Cerutti threatened to sue me for defamation before I’d even uttered his name or sent him a request for comment (Cerutti sent the unsolicited legal threat back in January after his company and my name were merely tagged in an Infoblox post on LinkedIn about VexTrio).

Asked to comment on the findings by Qurium and Infoblox, Cerutti vehemently denied being associated with VexTrio. Cerutti asserted that his companies all strictly adhere to the regulations of the countries in which they operate, and that they have been completely transparent about all of their operations.

“We are a group operating in the advertising and marketing space, with an affiliate network program,” Cerutti responded. “I am not [going] to say we are perfect, but I strongly declare we have no connection with VexTrio at all.”

“Unfortunately, as a big player in this space we also get to deal with plenty of publisher fraud, sketchy traffic, fake clicks, bots, hacked, listed and resold publisher accounts, etc, etc.,” Cerutti continued. “We bleed lots of money to such malpractices and conduct regular internal screenings and audits in a constant battle to remove bad traffic sources. It is also a highly competitive space, where some upstarts will often play dirty against more established mainstream players like us.”

Working with Qurium, researchers at the security firm Infoblox released details about VexTrio’s infrastructure to their industry partners. Just four days after Qurium published its findings, LosPollos announced it was suspending its push monetization service. Less than a month later, Adspro had rebranded to Aimed Global.

A REVEALING PIVOT

In March 2025, researchers at GoDaddy chronicled how DollyWay — a malware strain that has consistently redirected victims to VexTrio throughout its eight years of activity — suddenly stopped doing that on November 20, 2024. Virtually overnight, DollyWay and several other malware families that had previously used VexTrio began pushing their traffic through another TDS called Help TDS.

Digging further into historical DNS records and the unique code scripts used by the Help TDS, Infoblox determined it has long enjoyed an exclusive relationship with VexTrio (at least until LosPollos ended its push monetization service in November).

In a report released today, Infoblox said an exhaustive analysis of the JavaScript code, website lures, smartlinks and DNS patterns used by VexTrio and Help TDS linked them with at least four other TDS operators (not counting TacoLoco). Those four entities — Partners House, BroPush, RichAds and RexPush — are all Russia-based push monetization programs that pay affiliates to drive signups for a variety of schemes, but mostly online dating services.

“As Los Pollos push monetization ended, we’ve seen an increase in fake CAPTCHAs that drive user acceptance of push notifications, particularly from Partners House,” the Infoblox report reads. “The relationship of these commercial entities remains a mystery; while they are certainly long-time partners redirecting traffic to one another, and they all have a Russian nexus, there is no overt common ownership.”

Renee Burton, vice president of threat intelligence at Infoblox, said the security industry generally treats the deceptive methods used by VexTrio and other malicious TDSs as a kind of legally grey area that is mostly associated with less dangerous security threats, such as adware and scareware.

But Burton argues that this view is myopic, and helps perpetuate a dark adtech industry that also pushes plenty of straight-up malware, noting that hundreds of thousands of compromised websites around the world every year redirect victims to the tangled web of VexTrio and VexTrio-affiliate TDSs.

“These TDSs are a nefarious threat, because they’re the ones you can connect to the delivery of things like information stealers and scams that cost consumers billions of dollars a year,” Burton said. “From a larger strategic perspective, my takeaway is that Russian organized crime has control of malicious adtech, and these are just some of the many groups involved.”

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

As KrebsOnSecurity warned way back in 2020, it’s a good idea to be very sparing in approving notifications when browsing the Web. In many cases these notifications are benign, but as we’ve seen there are numerous dodgy firms that are paying site owners to install their notification scripts, and then reselling that communications pathway to scammers and online hucksters.

If you’d like to prevent sites from ever presenting notification requests, all of the major browser makers let you do this — either across the board or on a per-website basis. While it is true that blocking notifications entirely can break the functionality of some websites, doing this for any devices you manage on behalf of your less tech-savvy friends or family members might end up saving everyone a lot of headache down the road.

To modify site notification settings in Mozilla Firefox, navigate to Settings, Privacy & Security, Permissions, and click the “Settings” tab next to “Notifications.” That page will display any notifications already permitted and allow you to edit or delete any entries. Tick the box next to “Block new requests asking to allow notifications” to stop them altogether.

In Google Chrome, click the icon with the three dots to the right of the address bar, scroll all the way down to Settings, Privacy and Security, Site Settings, and Notifications. Select the “Don’t allow sites to send notifications” button if you want to banish notification requests forever.

In Apple’s Safari browser, go to Settings, Websites, and click on Notifications in the sidebar. Uncheck the option to “allow websites to ask for permission to send notifications” if you wish to turn off notification requests entirely.

The legislation aims to expand the federal government’s role in helping healthcare providers protect and respond to cyber-attacks

Interpol-coordinated Operation Secure led to 32 arrests, including the suspected ringleader of a cybercriminal organization

An ISC2 study found that 90% of security hiring managers would consider entry-level candidates with only previous IT work experience