Festive Season Scams: Protecting Your Staff from Bonus and Gift-Voucher Phishing

Every festive season brings a wave of scams aimed at employees: fake bonus notifications, gift-voucher requests from "the CEO", courier delivery alerts and too-good-to-be-true sale offers. One click can compromise accounts or devices, and attackers know people are busy and distracted.

Common festive scams

• Fake bonus or salary messages linking to credential-stealing login pages.
• Gift card requests from impersonated senior managers asking staff to buy vouchers urgently.
• Courier and delivery alerts with malicious links or attachments.
• Fake sale websites that steal card details.
• Invoice fraud with altered bank details as year-end payments rise.

Remind staff early

Send a short, friendly reminder before the festive season describing common scams and what to do if unsure.

Verify payment requests

Require a phone call or second approval for any change in bank details or urgent payment request, especially those arriving by email or messaging apps.

Use protective DNS

DNS filtering blocks access to known phishing and malicious sites, even if an employee clicks a link.

Enable multi-factor authentication

MFA stops attackers who steal passwords from logging into email and business systems.

Filter email

Advanced email filtering catches many impersonation and phishing attempts before they reach inboxes.

Make reporting easy

Encourage staff to report suspicious messages without fear of blame. Fast reporting helps protect colleagues.

Respond quickly

If someone enters credentials on a suspicious site, reset passwords immediately and review account activity.

The bottom line

Awareness, verification and layered protection keep festive scams from becoming incidents. UbiFi Cloud DNS adds a safety net for every device on your network.

Learn more about Cloud DNS & Web Filtering from UbiFi, or talk to our team.