Scam using gift cards prevalent

The holiday season is here, and that presents plenty of opportunities for scammers to spoil Alabamians’ celebrations. A few scams are specific to the holidays, but most are variations on everyday frauds, ramped up to match seasonal spikes in spending and web traffic.

A recently released AARP survey of adults 18 and older found that more than 70 percent of US adults plan to buy gift cards as presents. More, nearly one in five report that they have either given or received a gift card that had no funds on it, which were likely compromised by a scammer. That’s because gift card fraud shifts into...