Recently, there has been an increase in scam reports from US travellers after visiting the TSA PreCheck, Nexus and Global Entry application service websites. Travellers reported that they were charged over a hundred dollars in exchange for nothing. Reports about these scamming incidents were first encountered by researchers last March. By July, hackers were found abusing Google Advertisement to promote the fake websites on Google Search to increase their visitor traffics.
A report by a cybersecurity firm confirms that the scamming incident is currently operating, and since the holidays are coming, more travellers might be victimised by these scams.
TSA PreCheck is a program website that enables people to pass through an immediate and efficient screening process at the airport. Travellers who register in the program will receive a background check if they can travel in the United States without deleting personal items or going through hassling check every time they travel.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, travellers wanted to spend little time in places where many people gather, so that is why an increasing number of people registered in the TSA PreCheck program. TSA PreCheck programs require a renewal of registration every five years that will cost them about $70.
Scammers are taking advantage of TSA PreCheck subscription renewal.
Scammers are sending all travellers’ emails regarding a faker expiration of the TSA PreCheck membership and urge these targets to submit payment for the renewal of their application through an embedded URL. These fake emails sent by the scammers redirect their targets to renewal sites that can be deceiving to inattentive users. Some of the examples of these phoney renewal sites are coded as “airportprescreen[.]com”, “airportprescreening[.]com”,” applyfornexuscard[.]com” and many more.
These fake sites utilise the [.]com high-level domain, which increases the URL’s legitimacy. That is why people can be deceived by scammers easily.
The worst part of this scam is that the threat actors charge the victims a doubled renewal price. Instead of $70 being set for resubscription, it became $139.99. Those looking to register or resubscribe for a TSA PreCheck membership are strongly urged not to search for the URL in search engines since the scammers have acquired a high rank in Google search today.
