Gulf Air issues alert over ‘free ticket’ scam

Bahrain citizens and residents have been warned of a scam going around on social media networks that promise to give away free airline tickets. Scammers are sending out links to users online, enticing them to participate in an airlines survey and get free tickets in return. “Hey! Gulf Air Airline giving free tickets to 900 people to celebrate its 25 years.

Get your free tickets at htpp:// www.gulfair.com-free.online/,” the fake message reads. The link leads to potentially dangerous content. Gulf Air urged residents not to click on the link and share it with their friends. Gulf Air tweeted a message: “Stay Alert! This is a fake promotion being circulated on social media. Please follow our official verified Gulf Air channels for our latest offers.” Gulf Air’s official website is https://www.gulfair.com/. But that spam has “htpp://” only without ‘s’.

Historically, ‘https’ connections were primarily used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web, e-mail and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems. Since 2018, ‘https’ is used more often by web users than the original non-secure ‘http’, primarily to protect page authenticity on all types of websites; secure accounts; and keep user communications, identity, and web browsing private.