Here’s an oddity: I just tore September off the calendar – and yet, when walking through the store the other day, we’ve already passed through Halloween, left Thanksgiving in the rear-view mirror, and have just a few days left until Christmas.
And then, just this week in the email, comes an unsolicited solicitation to go to a website that will send a personalized letter to my child from Santa Claus.
“How much would that letter be?” I wondered. So I typed the web address into my browser (thus lessening the possibility of being sent to a fake site), and picked out the “personalized letter” option.
The very first thing that popped up was a box asking for confirmation of my email address.
The first red flag went up. Wait a second, you want my email address just so I can find out the price of the service? I did what any suspicious parent would do: I put in a made-up one (or maybe it was one that gets used for checking out such sites). It was the only way to advance to the next level.
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The second red flag: It wanted the child’s first and last name; the child’s gender. It obviously needed the child’s street address.
Again, wait a second. I’m just seeking a price for a service here. (The hope on the other end, of course, is that after I’ve entered all this information, when I get to the price – and supplying a credit card number – I’ll just go ahead and keep on going since I’m almost there.)
At this point, I decided to do a little research. That turned up an article dating to 2019, but it turned out the concerns therein are still timely two years later. The article asked: “Is that Letter from Santa a Scam?”
As luck would have it, there were many similarities in what the national Better Business Bureau wrote about and what I had just experienced: The letter offer came “in an email, selling a ‘Handwritten letter from Santa to Your Child.’ It encourages you to make your child’s holiday by purchasing ‘Santa’s special package’ for a price, … You click on the link, and it takes you to a website.”
If it’s a scam, in the best case you’re out $20 or so. At worst, the scammers have your credit-card number.
Another version promises a free Santa letter, but collects a lot of information, including street address and phone numbers. That information can then be sold, opening up a flood of possibilities.
The BBB goes on to suggest how to avoid being taken in by one of these emails. The advice is:
• Ignore calls for immediate action with urgency involved. (Like an email showing up three months in advance.)
• “Hover over links in emails to check their source. Scammers will make links look like something else. Place your mouse over hyper-linked text and the true destination will appear.”
• “Make sure the website has (real) contact information. … If something goes wrong with your order, you need to be able to contact the business at a physical address.” Use your search engine to check out addresses and phone numbers.
• “Check out the business on BBB.org and do a quick web search.”
• “Make sure you pay through a secure connection. When entering credit card information online, be sure that the URL starts with ‘HTTPS’ and has a lock icon in the browser bar.”
There are trustworthy places that have been sending out Santa letters for a long time. Just be sure to do your homework so you wind up with a nice – not a naughty – company.
Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.
