TURN DETECTIVE – AND RUMBLE THIS CLASSIC CASE OF FRAUD

ANYONE looking for a Canary Islands holiday last week might have stumbled across canarylettings.com – a classic example of a fraudster at work. Here is how to spot the clues. 1 THE website claims to have ‘more than ten years’ experience’. But its registration date shows it has only been around since November 17, 2017. Tip: Check the website domain name with a service such as lookwhois.net. Be wary if it has only been recently registered and if the registration period is short. 2 Misspellings and poor grammar. The website used the word ‘acomodation’ rather than the correct ‘accommodation’. Tip: Be wary. Poor spelling does not always mean a website is fraudulent but it is unprofessional and should ring alarm bells. 3 THE pictures of villas are genuine but stolen from a real estate website and names changed. For example, the fourbedroom luxury villa pictured right is described as Villa Seriana Mar – charging just €125 a night. But it is in fact villa Callao Salvaje, on the market for €1.5million. Tip: To find out if a photo has been filched, use a website search engine such as Google. Right click on the picture and tap on ‘search Google for image’. This will reveal other places where the photo appears. 4 A PHONE number that has only an answer machine. Tip: Be suspicious if you cannot get through or no one calls back. 5 THE photo of manager ‘Pedro’ is in fact someone called Gunther who works for a German building materials company and ‘Maria Ana’ is in fact a woman called Barbara. To make it harder to be rumbled, the scammer has flipped the image. Tip: Use online tools to flip the photo, such as flipapicture, and then do an image search.