“Summertime,” goes the classic George Gershwin song from Porgy and Bess, “and the living is easy.” Many people look forward to summer vacation all year. Unfortunately, scam artists — the only criminals we refer to as artists — do as well, because all too often the scamming is easy.
Here are three common vacation scams and how you can avoid them.
H.R. Vacation Scam: You get an email that appears to come from your employer’s Human Resources Department, asking you to follow a link to submit your request for vacation time. Clicking on the link can cause you to download dangerous malware or trick you into providing your online credentials, giving scammers access to your company’s computers and data.
How to avoid it: Never click on a link or provide personal information in response to an email or text message unless you have confirmed that the communication is legitimate. If you receive a communication that appears to come from your H.R. Department, contact the department directly through an official company email or phone number.
Car Rental Scam: Scammers create phony car rental company websites that appear to be legitimate. A.I. has made it easy for even technologically unsophisticated scammers to create such counterfeit sites. SEO poisoning is a cyberattack method in which criminals manipulate search engine rankings to push harmful websites to the top of search results. The websites can look legitimate, and the online ads can look polished, but you can bet that any money you pay to them won’t go toward renting you a car.
How to avoid it: Phony car rental websites can be hard to distinguish from websites of real rental companies. Always check the website’s URL carefully before responding to an offer. Is that O really a zero, or that capital I really a lowercase L? Go the extra step and determine who owns the website. There are several ways of doing this. One of the easiest is to go to ICANN (lookup.icann.org), enter the domain name, and click on “Lookup”; it can tell you who actually owns the website. For instance, if you think you are renting from Hertz and the website you are on is owned by someone in Nigeria, you can be pretty confident it is a scam.
Airbnb Scam: Scammers create listings for nonexistent properties on Airbnb, complete with fake reviews and A.I.-generated photos. Generally, a telltale sign that an Airbnb listing is a scam is when the “host” — the person who interacts with guests on a reservation — asks to communicate or make payments outside the Airbnb platform.
How to avoid it: Though Airbnb collects your money when you schedule a stay, it doesn’t issue payment to the host until after you’ve checked in; a host claiming before your stay that you haven’t paid is either scamming you or is new to Airbnb. Only communicate with hosts through the Airbnb website or app, and only use the Airbnb payment system with a credit card — never pay via wire transfer, Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, certified check, debit card, or any other method. Credit card companies provide higher levels of protection from scammers and are quite good at refunding money lost to scams.
Steve Weisman is a lawyer, college professor, author, and one of the country’s leading experts in cybersecurity, identity theft, and scams.
This article is featured in the May/June 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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