Tips for buying Christmas gifts and how to avoid being scammed

A man makes a transaction online using his credit card. | FILE PHOTO via rupixen/Unsplash

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Where would you buy Christmas gifts for your loved ones? Would it be via online or at physical score?

Holiday season or not, scammers will always find ways to take advantage of innocent individuals. They would use various tactics to swindle and deceive people out of their hard-earned money.

Various agencies including the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) have already made their call to the public to avoid scams this Christmas.

Learn more about these scams here: Beware of holiday scams: How to stay safe this Christmas

And to add into their reminders, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), through Senior Assistant Governor Johnny Noe Ravalo, also shared these tips for those planning to buy gifts for Christmas.

READ MORE:

Protect Yourself: How to Avoid Christmas Scams

’12 scams of Christmas’: Use social media responsibly to avoid being duped online

LIST: Whoscall cites 3 common scams to watch out for this Christmas season

Protect your identity

First, always protect your identity. Protecting your identity means not sharing your personal and financial identity to just anyone.

Scammers usually trick people by making them believe into fake charities, holiday raffles on social media, unregistered Christmas sales, online gadget giveaways, malicious online shopping websites, seasonal travel scams, hazardous holiday decorations, holiday smishing, bogus gift certificates, ATM skimming, cyber theft apps, and networking and pyramiding scams.

Be responsible in making choices

The second reminder that Ravalo shared is to be responsible in making choices.

Ravalo said in an interview with CDN Digital in Cebu that there are choices that can work, but there are also some that do not.

“So the question that you really want to ask yourself is, how much are you ready to make those
imperfect choices?”

He said that if you are the type of person who withdraws money from ATMs inside the mall, they have to be extra careful because there might be people observing you.

Plan ahead

The third one he reminded was to plan ahead.

“What is unnecessary to you may be necessary to me…You’ll have to learn to have a diskarte (strategy),” he added. This means planning ahead on the items you would buy and your mode of payment to it.

Ravalo wanted to underline that while a lot of agencies and offices have already reminded the people on things they need to avoid to prevent being scammed, at the end of the day, it is your call to act on those warnings for your safety.