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I received a booking request via email from a Gmail account. This email was preceded by another message from the same sender, in which they asked about check-in details. By chance, my listing is currently unlisted.
The second email closely mimicked a legitimate booking request and included a button linking to a fraudulent website:
a1rbnb…com.fr-1.online…dstxdv…sign-in,
where hosts are prompted to sign in.
I strongly believe this is part of a wider phishing campaign and that I’m not the only one who received such an email.
So, sisters and brothers, don’t feed the fraudsters with your accounts!
If people don’t know by now not to click on links in unsolicited emails from people they don’t know, regardless of whether they are hosts or not, they are extremely naive.
I’m surprised, too. But there must be enough people who fall for stuff to keep them going.
I see hosts on other forums posting their email addresses and/or phone numbers on a public forum. Have they never heard of identity theft? Are they not aware that their accounts can be hacked with this info?
My android phone tends to block calls from scam and spam numbers. I do occasionally get calls from upholstery clients who have gotten my number from other clients, but they tend to whatsapp or SMS me rather than call.
It was midnight when I received that email sent to the address I had recently provided to Airbnb. This address is neither public nor personal, it’s the one linked to the Google profile of my listing, which isn’t directly visible.
In my opinion, these Google-based e-mail addresses of Airbnb hosts are being scraped and specifically targeted as part of this campaign.
Apologies for how I worded my previous post. When I received that email, I was exhausted and about to collapse - unlike the ever-vigilant members of this forum.
My intention was to warn beginners here, and perhaps those considering becoming hosts, and casual readers.
There was nothing wrong with warning people. Just because people should be aware by now not to click on links from unknown people doesn’t mean there aren’t those who naively do so.
There’s another scam hosts have fallen for where “guests” message through the platform, saying they saw the same listing on another site cheaper, sending a link. If you click on the link, which hosts might do, concerned that someone is listing their place, the “guest” gets access to your device and personal information.
Nothing at all wrong. Although there are seasoned hosts who are a bit jaded by all these scams they’ve seen for years, there are new hosts starting every day.
Weirdly, I’m finding that there are fewer internet scammers these days but I’m getting dodgy stuff via regular mail.
A friend of mine got scammed out of $5000. She got a letter in the mail from her bank, on what seemed like official bank letterhead, saying she was behind on her mortgage payments. She would normally be savvy enough to phone the bank to find out what was going on, as she was sure she was up to date and was surprised to get the letter.
But there was a lot of crazy stuff going on in her life at the time, she was overwhelmed and stressed out, so she just transferred the $ to the account they had told her to in the letter, only to find out when she finally had time to talk to the bank that they hadn’t sent that letter.
I had a regular mail recently that informed me that a pharmacy I use had suffered a major data breach and that sensitive information had been compromised.
I looked it up online and sure enough, a data breach had occurred at the pharmacy. Within the extensive paperwork I was encouraged to contact a certain number so that I could get data protection that would be free for the first month.
Then I realised that the date of this breach was 18 months ago, long before I started using that pharmacy.
The letter was just a way to sell data protection services.
Others might have heard of this scam - well, not a scam exactly but pretty underhand nevertheless.
