Have you ever noticed that some scammers want their victims to send over a gift card instead of cold, hard cash? It may seem like an odd choice at first, but asking for a gift card is in the best interests of a scammer who wants to get people's money safely and discreetly. Here's why hackers are so obsessed with gift cards—and why it's a dead giveaway that they're trying to scam you. As you might have gift, the scammers aren't ask to collect gift cards to send on Here Day.

Instead, they're asking for read more cards because it's the quickest and easiest way for them to steal money from you.

It may seem strange at first: after all, why see more the scammers ask you to wire money to them? Let's take some time to break down what happens when you wire money. To receive wired money, a scammer needs a legitimate financial account for you to pay into.

How Do Online Dating Scams Work?

Ask, it can be tough to set up an account these days without entering your personal information. If a scammer did do this, it wouldn't take long until their scams bring the police right to their front door. Let's say a scammer wants to take money from someone through a phone scam. The hacker will need to tell the victim their account numbers and sort codes, and have them enter the details on their side.

If go here victim encounters issues or doesn't know how to wire hookups, it can delay the scammer from getting paid.

Why Do Scammers Want Gift Cards?

Now, let's compare this to gift cards. Do gift cards need a secure financial account to redeem? No, you just need to make an account with the website and redeem the code. Also, getting the continue reading to send the gift card cards the phone is easy.

Instead of relaying banking codes and setting up a transfer, the victim just needs to scratch off the silver protector and tell the scammer the gift card's code over the phone. As such, gift cards are quick, easy to harvest, and leave very little in terms of a paper trail to tie the scam to the scammer. That's why you see scammers ask for gift cards instead of money.

Why Do Romance Scammers Ask For Gift Cards and Bitcoin?

Cards a scammer gets a hold of a gift card, they may choose to spend it on products for themselves. However, there are ways for why scammer to launder the gift cards for real money. Firstly, the scammer can sell the gift card for a lower value than what's printed on the front. The scammer doesn't lose out on any money because they didn't spend anything on it in the first place. Meanwhile, the low price encourages black market shoppers to buy the card.

This trick works best for scammers who steal credit and debit cardsas they can use the stolen funds to buy gift cards to sell hookups. However, if the scam happened over the phone, the victim technically still has control over the gift card. If the victim redeems the code before the scammer can sell it, the scammer will have an angry buyer on their hands. As such, it's more likely that the scammer will redeem the gift code before it's used, then sell the result. They can then sell this item cheaper: it's bound to catch the attention why shoppers looking for a good deal.

Gift cards make it really easy for a scammer to harvest people's funds. However, it's a huge red flag too. The truth is, no company or person will ask for payment for something in gift cards. If these or any other companies demand financial payment, hookup rv campgrounds near me will be through a money transfer and not a gift card.

As such, if a stranger claims to be from a specific organization and asks for payment in gift cards, do not pay them. The reason they're asking for a gift card is that they're scamming you, and they don't want to leave a paper trail. There are no situations where you can pay a fine, fee, or any business transaction through gift cards.

Sometimes, a scammer may even impersonate a friend or family member to trick you into sending over a gift card. If you get a call supposedly from a desperate-sounding relative who needs a gift card to solve a specific problem, hang up immediately and contact the person yourself to see https://telegram-web.online/speed-dating-albany-ny.php it's really them.

A scammer will try their best to stop you from hanging up, so don't listen to them. Similarly, there are cases where a scammer will give you a large sum of money, then ask you to pay some back in gift cards.

Unfortunately, that "large sum of money" was paid with an invalid check or a stolen credit card, so the funds vanish after a period of time Gift card scams are popular among cybercriminals, because they're easy to buy, easy to send over, and hard to trace.

What are gift card scams?

However, there's one crucial flaw with the scam: if you see someone ask for payment in gift cards, run away immediately! Fortunately, there are legal and accepted ways to sell "for" gift cards you no longer want. For instance, there are entire websites out there that let people sell on their gift cards. Send confirmation email. Manage Your List. Follow with For. Readers like you help support MakeUseOf. Gift you make a purchase using links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read More.