The Scammers Waiting for Your Travel Troubles
It took Southwest Airlines just two minutes to reply to my request for help on social media on Monday. Fake Southwest wasn’t far behind. I posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, to informally test what Southwest and other airlines say is a growing problem: impostor accounts trying to obtain travelers’ personal information or money.
Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Air New Zealand have recently pinned warnings at the tops of their feeds about look-alike accounts. “We are aware of accounts on X impersonating our @FlyFrontier and @FrontierCare accounts. When contacting Frontier on X, please ensure you only communicate with our official accounts," Frontier’s post says.
I wasn’t duped because I was on the hunt for scammers. I know every major airline’s official handle and, well, travel is my job. But it wouldn’t be hard to mistake the accounts for the real thing, especially if you’re in a hurry this holiday travel season and the wait to reach a phone rep is long.
Or you might be unfamiliar with Twitter’s rebranding to X and switch from free blue check marks to a new, paid verification system. Fake accounts are an issue across social media, but X is the go-to site for airline complaints and questions. It’s easy for travelers to post and companies constantly monitor it.
“If scammers are spending enough time and energy doing this, somebody’s falling for it," says Jason Rabinowitz, an airline marketing consultant. Rabinowitz, who lives in New York, spends his entire day with X open on his computer screen. For the past couple of months, he has noticed that anytime he has posted about an airline, he has been deluged with replies from random fakers—even when he wasn’t looking for customer-service help.
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