Search Ads as a Vector for Travel Scams

Dawn Gilbertson, writing for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

Calder says that he tried to rebook at the given link a few times but that it wouldn’t work. He became worried new flight options were dwindling, so he googled the airline’s customer-service number. (There was a link to customer-service contacts way down in the email that he initially overlooked.)

The rest of the story is sadly familiar to the Better Business Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, airlines and consumer advocates. It’s called an impostor scam. This can occur when a company impersonates an airline’s customer-service number or site, often by buying a sponsored ad on a search platform. The company is hoping that panicked consumers trying, say, to rebook a flight will click on the first link they see, bringing them to unscrupulous parties that try to charge exorbitant fees. I’ve written before about such tactics, and they are only becoming more sophisticated with AI.

“Scammers thrive on that sense of urgency,” says John Breyault, a vice president at the National Consumers League whose coverage area includes fraud.

The person who answered Calder’s call identified himself as a Lufthansa representative and asked for the Lufthansa confirmation number. He found new flights on Lufthansa’s partner Air Canada and Austrian Airlines, a Lufthansa Group subsidiary, on the same late-summer dates.

The kicker, which Calder admits in hindsight is a colossal red flag: He had to pay $12,132 to make the change. That’s more than five times the amount of the original tickets.

In addition to airlines, these scammers often impersonate hotels. Yet another reason to try Kagi as your default web search engine. I’m not saying Kagi is scam-proof in its actual search results, but it’s 100 percent resistant to scammers buying search result ads — because they have no ads. With Kagi, you pay a very small subscription fee and in exchange you get better results with zero ads.

Also, another reason to worry about Apple’s upcoming ads in Apple Maps.

★ Tuesday, 12 May 2026