How I stopped scammers ruining my holiday

Sun’s out, scum’s out. Or to put it another way: watch out or we’re all going on a scammers’ holiday.

There’s been a huge increase in the amount of scams online and they’re hitting us where it hurts most – our longed-for holidays. This week it happened to me.

Not long ago, it was revealed that criminals were hacking into hotels on the Booking.com system and sending messages to customers asking for bank and card details or payments while threatening them with cancellation, to add a sense of urgency. Holidaymakers read the messages and because they seemed legitimate, having appeared to come through the Booking.com app, some paid up, leaving them out of pocket by hundreds and even thousands of pounds.

Booking.com says – contrary to appearances – its own security hasn’t been breached and that it has “safeguards” in place, including a “fake reservation detector”.

Now the criminals have got their claws into Airbnb. I’m due to go to Provence, where my sister lives, for a few days next month. The apartment was chosen, booked, paid for and sorted weeks ago.

Then two days ago I received an email asking me for more money. The issue was apparently to do with verifying my card. It didn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility that I’d made a mistake. I logged onto Airbnb and the same message, word for word, was on the site. The “hosts” wanted me to send the same amount again, which would be refunded “immediately” once it came through. Otherwise my booking would be cancelled.

First of all, in order to confirm my reservation, I needed to click on a link. I didn’t. Instead I read on and discovered I could pay the amount into a bank account. On closer inspection the details were absurd; the account was with Papaya Ltd, a “digital bank” based in Malta which had been fined £239,000 for anti-laundering failures in June last year. The beneficiary’s name on the account had somehow morphed from Gabriel to Jadwiga.

So I called up Airbnb customer support. And – I got through!

To a person! It was indeed a fraud. I had nothing more to pay.

I felt vindicated, if exhausted, but so freaked out that the fraudsters had targeted me, I cancelled and booked somewhere else. It’s a cautionary tale: stay vigilant now or you might not get to relax later.