Gift card fraud

If you’ve received a gift card you can’t use and don’t want to regift, you can find buyers online ready to buy it from you. But be careful about who you’re dealing with. Holiday scammers offering to purchase gift cards might ask you to do a three-way “balance check.”

This is when they listen on the phone while you confirm the balance with the card issuer. What they’re doing is capturing the sounds of your keystrokes to find out your login information. That way, they can use the card’s value without you knowing it.

Previously, gift card buyers had to to worry about criminals secretly uncovering activation codes from the card’s in-store display racks.

Scammers used to scrape off the code covering, jot down the code, cover it back up, and wait for a buyer to load on money before using the stolen activation code to access the funds.

This doesn’t happen as often anymore because gift cards are better protected. Improved packaging or an additional PIN needed for activation has helped solve this issue.

Avoid this holiday scam: Avoid posts on social media for gift card purchase requests or from individuals offering to pay 100% of your card’s value.

A legitimate buyer will pay you 80% of your card’s worth. Sellers are better off using gift card marketplaces like Raise.com and Cardpool.com, which have customer-service contacts and are tracked by the Better Business Bureau.

You may notice that you can’t access the stored value in your gift cards, mainly Visa cards from Walmart. The company purposely waits to let recipients use them until 24 hours after activation. It’s a security measure against money laundering.

You should check the card itself or the packaging, which should reveal when it will be active.