For many of us, planning a cruise is almost as much fun as the actual trip itself. But a new scam making the rounds is turning what should be exciting into a nightmare… and at least one cruise line is warning their guests to proceed with caution!
Why So Many Are Falling For The New Cruise Scam
It seems as if every day, there’s a new attempt to gain access to your private information. Over the past few years, we’ve all learned the hard way just how easy it is to have your life turned upside down by hackers and others will ill intent. Sadly, even as cruising has become more popular than ever, the number of scammers targeting the sea-loving community has grown exponentially.
Only a few short months ago, Carnival Corporation suffered a security breach which exposed the personal information of up to 6 million people. Now comes word that Norwegian Cruise Line guests are the latest to be targeted… and the nefarious plot turns what should be a reason to celebrate into a potential disaster.
Read More: What You Need to Know About Carnival Data Breach
On a Reddit thread devoted to all things NCL, Low-Mood2118 shared that they had received a “a suspicious email this morning, right before the legit email from NCL about checking in. My cruise is November 1, 21 days out, which is when you can start the process, so passengers would be expecting to hear from NCL.”
Norwegian Issues An Official Warning
Having seen another Reddit thread warning a Norwegian Cruise Line scam was afoot, the redditor took a closer look at the suspicious missive. “Mine said security required further verification of my credit card info.” The user went on to say “What’s scary about this one is that it’s the most legitimate looking scam email I have seen — no typos, no grammatical errors, good graphics and, as I said, the timing was spot on. Exactly when you would be expecting to hear from NCL to finalize details about your cruise.”
So serious is the problem that Norwegian Cruise Line has addressed it directly. In a note at the top of their official webpage, a new statement has been added under the bold-type headline “Important Guest Advisory.” It reads: “We are investigation reports of fraudulent emails claiming to be from Norwegian Cruise Line. We advise guests not to click links, respond to these emails, or provide personal payment information.”
How to Avoid the Latest Cruise Scam
As several redditors pointed out, the easiest way to spot the fraudulent email is to hover your cursor over the email address itself. As the line’s warning points out, “Norwegian Cruise Line emails come from @ncl.com, @e.ncl.com or @nclcorp.com.”
What makes this particular attempt to steal your information so easy to fall for is how much they already have. The emails in question often contain everything from the guest names to reservation numbers, all of which can easily trick unsuspecting cruisers into assuming the email in question is legitimate. No word as of yet on how that information was obtained.
Hovering over an email address in order to determine the sender’s veracity is a trick commonly taught in classes designed to help people detect scammers. Others, as mentioned in the Reddit post, include looking out for grammatical and spelling errors which one wouldn’t expect to find in an email sent by a large, mainstream company.
Read Next: Imposter Scams Thousands of Carnival Guests
