10 Ways to Avoid Gift Card Fraud This Holiday Season

Gift cards are the most popular and requested item this holiday season, but so too are scams designed to take advantage of unsuspecting shoppers. The National Retail Federation estimates we'll spend close to $25 billion on gift cards this year, and thieves are anxious to get a piece of the action.

Technology has made this easy. Thieves can buy a small, inexpensive handheld scanner and capture the codes embedded in the pre-loaded card before you even buy it. Once they have the code, it goes back on the rack and eventually into a shopping cart and later the hands of a gift recipient.