Report: Nearly two-thirds of all travel spam emails are scams

As the demand for travel continues to grow post-lockdown, scammers are paying attention and taking advantage of that pent-up desire.

Australian travellers are a particular target, ending up in the top 10 countries targeted by travel scammers.

Researchers from the Bitdefender Antispam Lab have been analysing emails between May and July 2023, and while there’s been no month-on-month increase in spam, some interesting trends have emerged.

Europeans were the most targeted by travel scams, making up 42 per cent of the total scam emails, with North America following with 40 per cent. Looking at countries, however, the US takes the top spot with 39 per cent of all scam emails. Ireland is next with 16 per cent, Germany and the UK follow with 6 per cent each, with India and South Africa, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, and France bringing up the top 10.

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Australia, Denmark and France each make up just 3 per cent of the global total. Australia doubtless makes the cut thanks to travellers wanting to travel to northern hemisphere destinations to get away from a chilly winter.

As to where these scams are coming from, again, the US takes the top spot, with 40 per cent of all travel-related spam coming from US IP addresses. Russia takes second spot with 12 per cent of all spam.

Bitdefender found that the subject lines were often a dead giveaway to whether an email was just spam with a marketing lure or a more malicious scam. Generally speaking, if an email has “free gift”, “Southwest” (as in the airline), or “survey” in the subject line, it’s a scam. For example, all of these subject lines were scam emails:

You have 1 new united airlines survey reward ready to claim
Answer our survey questions and get a chance to win flights for your summer travels
You have won an 500 southwest airlines gift card
Shopper you can qualify to get a 50 southwest gift card

As a savvy reader can see, the usual caveats about poor grammar also apply.

David Hollingworth

David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.