Beware Of This New Airline Customer Support Scam That's Fooling Travelers
If you're planning on or in the middle of a trip this summer and need to get a hold of your airline's customer support, you're going to want to know about a tricky new method scammers are using to rob you of your money. What makes this particular grift so sinister is that the scammers aren't seeking you out, but rather waiting for you to come to them. Even worse, they're doing it through a medium that nearly everyone uses and implicitly trusts: Google.
Twitter user Shmuli Evers was recently targeted by this scam and detailed both his experience and how the con works in a detailed Twitter thread in July 2023. It began when Evers' flight with Delta Air Lines was canceled before he could board the plane at JFK International Airport. Seeing an expectedly long line at Delta's customer service desk, he opted to call the airline instead and searched Google for the right phone number.
What Evers didn't realize at the time was that he wasn't calling Delta at all, but instead a scammer. In the Twitter thread, Evers outlines several red flags that popped up and gradually clued him into what was happening throughout his interactions with the scammers.
The scammers pose as customer support
When he searched on Google for Delta's customer support, Evers found a toll-free 888 number that looked legit. He dialed it, but the call quickly broke up. He was then called back from a number with a French area code, with DTI Publishing listed as the Caller ID. Considering most people calling an airline's customer support, especially from the airport, are already dealing with the stress and anxiety of a canceled flight, it's no surprise that scammers are counting on people like Shmuli Evers not to get distracted by red flags like phone numbers that don't quite make sense. Evers, eager to book a new flight, quickly gave his information to the caller, which included his name and flight confirmation number.
The scammer was able to use this information to then look up Evers' flight and continue posing as customer support, offering him an alternative flight departing out of nearby Newark Liberty International Airport. This was conducted through SMS, which was another red flag, but Evers confirmed that he'd take the alternate flight. The scammer said he would cancel the original flight, charge him five times the original cost for the new one, and would need his payment information. Fortunately, Evers had his guard up and asked where the caller was located.
The caller responded that he was from Rochester, New York, "two hours south of New York City." Evers finally confirmed he was speaking with a fraud because Rochester is actually several hours northwest of New York City. Evers refused to give his payment information to the scammer, who tried in vain to continue the grift through text, before eventually giving up. Evers' Twitter thread continues, however, because he quickly realized this particular scam wasn't limited to targeting just Delta customers.
This scam is persisting across several major airlines
According to his Twitter bio, Shmuli Evers works in UX design as his day job, which is perhaps why he was able to quickly realize that the entire scam began with a fake phone number for Delta's customer support found on Google. Typically, when you Google search a major company or service like Delta, you'll immediately get core information listed on the page, alongside expected search results. In this case, the scammers were able to edit the phone number from Delta's correct one and change it to one they had possession of. If you're in a rush and quickly using Google for help, none of this would seem out of the ordinary.
After Evers realized this was how he was nearly swindled out of his money, he searched for other major airlines and quickly surmised that the scam was playing out for other major airlines as well. The listed customer support numbers for American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Air France, Qantas, Turkish Airlines, and ITA Airlines had all been altered on Google to fraudulent ones. Several hours after initially posting his story, Evers tweeted that Delta Air Lines had changed their phone number back to the correct one on Google. One commenter noted that a similar scam had targeted the Secret Service several years ago.
Summer is a busy time for air travel, so if you're flying somewhere and need to get hold of an airline, make sure you're not communicating with a con artist. If you're not directly talking to a customer service agent at the airport or through a chat on its official app or website, take extra steps to verify the number you're dialing or texting, and be extremely cautious about giving any payment information over the phone.