This is more of a COVID play on money, but for those of us who were still working (often with a lot of overtime), it may be of interest.

I hope you keep providing this valuable data to your readers to shut down the avenues for these scammers.

We were exhausted and needed some way to relax. A massage!

I researched some local massage businesses, and came across two different "massage" ads, both advertised on social media. I took advantage of one, but avoided the other.

The first was a "service". The "masseuse" shared a story about their spa being closed because of COVID but that they were practicing at their apartment and would give you a massage deal for half the price (since "they weren't splitting the fee with the spa"). In order to schedule, they pitched you to go to their appointment site to make an appointment and pay a "$4 fee' for that service. There were no Terms of Service posted, so I figured if this didn't work, I was out four bucks and my credit card would protect me from the fraud. No big deal.

But once I paid, I got redirected to a whole maze of other "pay-for-porn" sites or "pay-for-dating" sites that were all rather dicey and didn't look legit.

I then got a few fraud alerts from my credit card company for charges of $39.99, all of which resulted in disputes or calls to the site owner. Since the site owners knew they were a part of a scam, they'd either make the quick refund or they'd be unreachable.

This resulted in me having to shut down a card and be inconvenienced for a week, but I'm just glad that I didn't get scammed further.

I hope you keep providing this valuable data to your readers to shut down the avenues for these scammers. But I'd also hope that web providers, and credit card processors finally do something about the abuse and clamp down on these people and guarantee funds back to the payors to improve their reputation.