‘Your Wallet’: Don’t let scammers steal your gift money this holiday season

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Buying gifts for family and friends has never been easier with online shopping, but that also means it’s easier for a scammer to fool people.

“There’s never more money changing hands than there is during the holiday months,” said Josh Planos with the Better Business Bureau of Nebraska. “There is a lot of activity involving scams this time of year.”

Planos said there is an increasing number of online retailer scams and social media scams.

He said you can avoid them and keep more money in your wallet by paying attention to the website URL.

If there’s a misspelling, that indicates that the website is just a look-alike.

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Planos said it’s safer to shop from a desktop than a phone since you can hover over the link before you click on it.

“The reality is, you have no idea where you’re being directed to if you are clicking on a social media ad,” he said. “On mobile, you’re almost always being presented with an abridged version, so you can hide a lot in the details. And scammers typically do because they know that mobile shopping is so popular these days.”

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Planos said you shouldn’t immediately trust something just because it comes across your feed.

“Just because you see something on your social media timeline does not mean someone has rubber-stamped it with their seal of approval,” he said. “It just means that somebody paid a certain amount of money for it to appear there.”

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Don’t be embarrassed if you do get scammed. You should report it no matter what, even if you didn’t lose much money.

Planos said it will help prevent others from falling victim to the same scam.

Editor’s note: This report is part of a weekly series Channel 8 is airing called “Your Wallet.”  We’ll be looking into topics that deal with your money. The reports air every Monday during the Channel 8 News at 6 p.m.