Taking advantage of children’s wishes at Christmas is a pretty terrible thing to do, but there are scammers who do exactly that.

There are various services on the Internet to do with Christmas and the festive season and APPS that let children speak to Santa Claus, make wish lists, watch Santa travel across the skies etc.

Most of these are honest of course.

One that’s been recently turned into a scam is the Santa letter.

You get emails selling you the idea of buying a personalised Santa Letter package for your child or children.

You are promised

• A personalised letter signed by Santa
• A certificate
• Santa’s map
• Santa’s nice list
• All sent from the North Pole

Sounds good, but it’s fake – you may get something worth only a fraction of the payment you make but more likely is you get nothing for your payment and probably your credit card details etc. are sold on to other scammers.

Be very careful what you pay for online and preferably use well-known brands.

It’s not always easy to recognise such a scam, but you can do the following

Ignore any spam emails you receive – search online for what you want instead and look for reviews to check
Ask friends and relatives – if they have had a good experience buying from specific websites then try those first
Check the email sender’s address. If it’s a nonsensical one such as thermosphere or dehypnotised then steer clear.
Check the sender’s domain. If the address is “.date” or “.bid” or anything else that makes no sense for someone claiming to offer Santa Letters then steer clear

Don’t be caught out this Christmas

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