{"id":77293,"date":"2024-06-20T14:16:07","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T14:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/20\/booking-com-warns-of-up-to-900-increase-in-travel-scams\/"},"modified":"2024-06-20T14:16:07","modified_gmt":"2024-06-20T14:16:07","slug":"booking-com-warns-of-up-to-900-increase-in-travel-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/20\/booking-com-warns-of-up-to-900-increase-in-travel-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"Booking.com warns of up to 900% increase in travel scams"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Booking.com<\/div>


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Booking.com is warning artificial intelligence (AI) is driving an explosion in travel scams.<\/p>\n

The firm’s internet safety boss, Marnie Wilking, said there had been “anywhere from a 500 to a 900% increase” in the past 18 months.<\/p>\n

She said there had been a particularly marked increase in phishing – where people are tricked into handing over their financial details – since generative AI tools like ChatGPT burst onto the market.<\/p>\n

“Of course, we’ve had phishing since the dawn of email, but the uptick started shortly after ChatGPT got launched,” she said. <\/p>\n

“The attackers are definitely using AI to launch attacks that mimic emails far better than anything that they’ve done to date,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Phishing attacks often try to convince people to hand over their card details through by sending them fake – but very convincing looking – internet booking links.<\/p>\n

Scammers often target websites like Booking.com and Airbnb because they allow people to list their own places to stay<\/p>\n

After someone pays up, the scammers either vanish without a trace – leaving the buyer without a place to stay – or even try to scam them out of more money through follow-up messages. <\/p>\n

These sorts of scams have been around for decades, though they often come with telltale signs of fraud, such as spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But – speaking at the Collision technology conference in Toronto – Ms Wilking said AI was making them harder to detect because it could generate realistic images and much more accurate text, in multiple languages.<\/p>\n

She is calling for hotels and travellers to use two-factor authentication – it involves an additional security check, such as inputting a code sent to you phone – calling it “the best way to combat phishing and credential stealing”.<\/p>\n

She also urged people to more vigilant than before when clicking on links.<\/p>\n

But despite criticising how scammers are using AI, she said the technology was also allowing Booking.com to rapidly remove fake hotels that tried to scam people.<\/p>\n

“We’ve set up AI models to detect those and either block them from getting on there to begin or take it down before there’s any booking,” she said.<\/p>\n

Jane Hawkes, a consumer expert specialising in the travel industry, said travel providers should “step up efforts” to make people aware of the scams.<\/p>\n

“They also have a responsibility to advise travellers ways to minimise the risk of being scammed,” she said.<\/p>\n

But she said people should do their research “with due diligence” to avoid falling for them in the first place.<\/p>\n

“Check that contact details are readily available on websites and that there is a telephone number – many scam sites purposely don\u2019t have one,” she said.<\/p>\n

And she also recommended booking package holidays, rather than booking flights and accommodation separately, and to use a credit card to maximise how much you are protected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Booking.com is warning artificial intelligence (AI) is driving an explosion in travel scams. The firm’s internet safety boss, Marnie Wilking, said there had been “anywhere from a 500 to a 900% increase” in the past 18 months. She said there had been a particularly marked increase in phishing – where people are tricked into handing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/b851\/live\/5b3d93e0-2ee7-11ef-88d9-0bf10c68769b.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[12049,3631,9453,6005,5219],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77295,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77293\/revisions\/77295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}