Gift Cards Are The Clue

On By John GrubbIn Scams, Security
Landry's gift card

The picture above is an image of a Landry’s Gift Card. Landry’s – they have one of the best reward programs in the nation and their restaurant group includes some of our favorite name brands. Joyce and I go to Saltgrass Steakhouse, Bubba Gump, Joe’s Crab House, Landry’s Seafood, Mitchel’s Fish Market, Rainforest Café and on special occasions, either Chart House or Morton’s Steakhouse. There are a ton of Landry restaurants we haven’t even experienced yet but we hope to add to our memory book once this pandemic is over. We’ve been Landry’s Select Club members for ten (10) years this month and we just love all our experiences at these restaurants.

However, this post is not to sell you on Landry’s nor am I trying to talk you into buying a Landry’s gift card. This post’s purpose is to caution you about gift cards. On Monday, the FBI issued a special warning about online holiday shopping. One of the items they warned about related to gift cards. Here’s a quote from their bulletin:

Beware of posts on social media sites that appear to offer vouchers or gift cards, especially deals that are too good to be true, such as free gift cards. Some may pose as holiday promotions or contests. It may even appear one of your friends shared the link with you. Often, these scams lead you to participate in an online survey that is actually designed to steal personal information.
Be careful if someone asks you to purchase gift cards for them. In these scams, the victims received either a spoofed email, a spoofed phone call, or a spoofed text from a person in authority requesting the victim purchase multiple gift cards for either personal or business reasons. The gift cards are then used to facilitate the purchase of goods and services, which may or may not be legitimate.

In the quote above, I added the underlining for emphasis.

I often get requests like this on Social Media. Someone “follows me” and starts a friendly conversation. Somewhere down the road, they ask if I could do them a favor and get them iTunes or Amazon or some other type of gift cards. (Once they do that, I block them.) So, be careful.

The warning from the FBI included other security points regarding holiday online shopping. If you’d like to read the entire bulletin, click HERE.