Crane Hassold Director of Threat Intelligence at Abnormal Security says scammers are sending phishing emails to unsuspecting travelers claiming their TSA Pre-check is about to expire and asking them to fill out a form with personal information to keep their TSA PreCheck active.
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This is what the scam email looks like.
Besides asking for personal information, Hassold says the scammers' biggest goal is to get your money.
"It asks you to pay $140 for a supposed application fee that gets paid through PayPal. They're just simply trying to make money in any way they can, and this is a great example of some of the pure social engineering that we see every single day that cybercriminals are using," Hassold said.
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That's a big red flag, as the official TSA website allows you to pay with a credit card and only costs $85.00. Hassold says the scam email contains a link that directs you to a different website than the official government TSA website. You can look at the URL and see it does not end in .gov.
This is what the fake website looks like.
Remember scammers just aren't impersonating the TSA, they will pretend to be with any legit company trying to get your money and personal information.