{"id":8284,"date":"2023-09-20T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=8284"},"modified":"2023-09-19T21:26:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T03:26:48","slug":"a-new-type-of-giftcard-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/20\/a-new-type-of-giftcard-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Type of Gift Card Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been slowly collecting images of compromised gift cards found at stores for over a year for a future gift card scam spotting post, and while those attacks vary, they&#8217;re all basically some form of tampering with a physical gift card, its package, or its barcode. You&#8217;ll find them in the wild as compromised Visas, Mastercards, Apple cards, BestBuy cards, or just about anything else. (Side note: If you have example pictures of that type of scam and wouldn&#8217;t mind if I include them in the post whenever I write it, <a href=\"mailto:milesearnandburn@gmail.com\" class=\"ek-link\">I&#8217;d appreciate an email<\/a>. I promise I&#8217;ll write it before the heat death of the universe or you&#8217;ll get double your money back.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The New Scam<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the weekend there was a new type of gift card scam (albeit an old type of network security scam) to hit the community: a hacked email inbox. This matters for two reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Many gift card buyers and resellers keep all their card numbers in a shared <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/sheets\/about\/\" class=\"ek-link\">Google Sheet<\/a>, accessible with your Google account<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Physical <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/23\/happy-cards-101\/\" class=\"ek-link\">Happy gift cards<\/a> are redeemed online and a link for later retrieval is sent to your email<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If a hacker gets control of your email, they&#8217;ve probably got access to your gift cards too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Staying Safe<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Not to sound like a network security prognosticon (yes, I made that term up), but there are steps you can take to help protect yourself from a similar attack:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Always use two-factor authentication on your network accounts<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Get rid of any dormant accounts that may have access to sensitive information<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Double check your sharing settings on sheets or documents with sensitive information<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Prefer Google Authenticator instead of SMS messages for two-factor authentication<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Archive and remove old information from your documents and sheets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, if you find yourself in a similar situation, do a few things immediately:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Change your passwords<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Call the card issuers and report fraud (the good news is you still probably have all the card numbers too)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Reach out to others in the community who can offer level headed advice after the dust settles<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If this happened to you, or happens to you in the future, I&#8217;m sorry, that sucks. If it hasn&#8217;t happened to you yet, consider making the above steps part of your regular housekeeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/prognostro.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8286\" style=\"width:420px\" width=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/prognostro.png 540w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/prognostro-288x300.png 288w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Prognostico: The network security prognosticon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction I&#8217;ve been slowly collecting images of compromised gift cards found at stores for over a year for a future gift card scam spotting post,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8284"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8292,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8284\/revisions\/8292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}