A warning has been issued by Iata over the fraudulent use of the airline trade body’s named to extract money from industry partners.
Fraudsters have been known to impersonate Iata staff members or to misuse the organisation’s logo and name.
Iata urged air transport industry participants to be on the alert for fraudulent activities.
Examples include:
• Fraudsters contacting users of Iata products and services by email or telephone, under false names – sometimes they misuse IATA employee names – seeking payment for products or services and/or claiming payments for outstanding amounts due.
• Fraudsters using email addresses similar to an Iata email address but using different domain names such as “@gmail.com” or “@iattafinance.org”.
• Email accounts are often masked so that emails appear to have been sent from a genuine Iata address with the “@iata.org” domain name, while their reply-to domain name is different. E.g. “iata@iata.org” replies to “revenue@iata-payments.org”.
• Forged documents sometimes display the Iata logo or include links to a fake website.
• Users of Iata products and services should always be wary of requests to update bank account information.
If you doubt the authenticity of communications purporting to be from Iata, whether those communications request payment or not, please do not respond and notify Iata immediately at information.security@iata.org, the organisation said.
“Fraudulent internet use is a crime and Iata takes any abuse of its identity seriously,” it added.
A revised guidance document, “Fraudulent Emails Warning”, has been published giving examples of the different techniques used by fraudsters.