Beware 'Net Scam'

[bambbbam2]

From:
http://finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,19741987-31037,00.html



"
DIANE Willis thought the cheap tickets to fly to Melbourne and Brisbane were almost too good to be true. She was right.

Ms Willis is one of at least a dozen Australians stung by a scam internet site offering cheap airline tickets that looked all above board.
But she discovered to her cost that the website and the tickets were fictional.

"I really thought it was right, the website looked good, it was offering tickets from Qantas, from Virgin, from Jetstar," she said.

"This is a warning for anyone that you've got to be careful about these things."

A friend of Ms Willis, who used the same newflights.net website to buy tickets, raised concerns when she went to confirm her Qantas tickets only to find that six tickets had been booked."

 

[JohnK]

Not surprised that the website has been taken down.

Hindsight is a powerful word and not meaning to be nasty but wouldn't you check the reputability of the website or company you are purchasing tickets from before purchasing?

 

[Mal]

Yeah, I agree the original purchasers should have been more careful.

But, unless you really know what you are doing, it's easy to be stung. Who checks the websites you visit to check that they are a registered travel agent? Who checks that the number they show actually belongs to them, and hasn't been "borrowed".

Simple checks in hindsight, but not something most people do on a regular basis!

Maybe they did a Google search for something like "Qantas Cheap Tickets" and found a link they thought was legitimate.

Many things come into play here... I'm just glad things have been shutdown.

I'll have to try and find a copy of the original website. I'm interested in what techniques they used and how they suckered people (purely from an IT perspective of course). That sort of stuff makes interesting reading/researching from an IT Security point of view.