Airline Ticket Phishing Scam.
 

From a pilot's board I go to:

The Department of State Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) provided the below information regarding bogus Airline Ticketing Websites. It is provided for informational purposes only.

“Use caution when purchasing airline tickets online. The following airline ticketing Internet websites have been identified to be scams: www.BusySky.net; www.CheapClouds.com; www.CrazyTickets.net; and www.SubmitPrice.net.
These sites attract customers by undercutting airline ticket prices offered elsewhere. They capture your credit card information, including account number, expiration date, and CVV (an anti-fraud security feature on credit cards).
The customer receives a message stating that the credit card transaction has been declined, followed by instructions to wire funds for payment of the tickets. This scam is quite clever in that unlike the usual phishing scam, they have not initiated the contact. The customer makes the initial contact by doing a web search for the best ticket prices.

This creates a false perception of legitimacy. If successful, they will have obtained the customers' credit card information (sufficient to do mail order, phone order, or internet order), the customers' funds (if wired), and deposit account information (origination of wire). The web sites reportedly trace back to Bulgaria. The Secret Service has been informed of the sites.” (Source: Department of State CIRT)

be careful out there!!

Thanks, flygirl! I never use sites other than the recognized ones..but an offer like that could be tempting!

Flygirl, there are a couple of threads on the Airline Forum that address this. If you haven't already done it, you may want to post this helpful info over there.

There's an airline forum now? You know, I bookmark Europe and US, never bothered to look at other forums. will do, thanks!

Were you suprised to find there are now <b>16</b> forums (fori? My Latin fails me). Those editors at HQ have been busy lately. I bookmarked the Europe forum too and change to the others with the &quot;change forum&quot; box at the top left-hand side of the page, just above the list of threads.

yes, very surprised! who has time to go looking at all those other forums though - you'd have to be a serious addict here!

thanks for the tip.