Blog / More Travel Woes – right from the comfort of your own home

Air travel back then was more elegant – we had to dress up and behave like we were at a guest’s house for dinner. You even got hot meals served to you in Economy with real cutlery. Ah, the good old days!  However, part of the not-so-good old days of employee travel was the check-in experience at the airport.  As a family traveling on free passes, we had the anxiety of being bumped by last-minute paying passengers. More than once, we found ourselves stranded at the airport waiting for the next flight – sometimes until the next day. One thing stuck with me from these experiences:

Check-in as early as you can to confirm your travel and seat.

So, if you’re like me, you find the airline’s online check-in system a great time saver. Up to twenty four hours in advance, it provides peace-of-mind being able to confirm your reservation, choose your seat, even upgrade to a better seat, order a meal, and pre-check your luggage. Of course now-a-days, all of the these PERCs cost extra.

Now the SCAMMERS want in.  One of our techs alerted us to the latest phishing Email SCAM making it’s way to client’s inboxes. Here is a summary of how it works:

Bad guys are doing research on you personally using social media and find out where and when you (might) travel for business or pleasure. Next, they craft an email especially for you with an airline reservation or receipt that looks just like the real thing, sent with a spoofed “From” email address that also looks legit.

Sometimes, they even have links in this email that go to a website that looks identical to the real airline, but it is fake. They try to do two things: 1) try to steal your corporate username and password, and 2) try to trick you into opening the attachment which could be a PDF or DOCX. If you click on the link or open the attachment, your workstation will possibly get infected with malware that allows the bad guys to hack into your network.

Our mail filters have already caught and deleted several Emails coming from delta-tickets.com – a fake site. I expect there will be several more from different websites posing as legitimate airline check-in sites. Here is a link to the full article.

Protecting yourself is relatively easy:

Remember, if you want to check any airline reservations or flight status, open your browser and type the website name in the address bar or use a bookmark that you yourself set earlier. Do not click on links in emails to go to websites. And as always…. Think before You Click!

So, it’s matter of following standard procedures – not trusting the hyperlinks in Emails – and deleting the suspect mail. As a further verification, I always check for the airline’s 6-letter confirmation code that was issued during your initial reservation. A phishing Email won’t contain it.

Of course, I’d be a sucker for the airline’s Email (spoof) that announces my free upgrade to Business Class – click here. I’ve only traveled Business Class a few times, but it reminds me of the way airline travel used to be.

Now, if we could only get passengers to dress a little better than if they’re going to the beach – and stop carrying all of their worldly possessions onto the plane like nomads.

Thanks

Dave White