The call, text or email might seem on the up and up at obedient. It might say you won a cash prize, or that your computer contains updating, or, on a darker note, that you owe back taxes that need to be paid or you risk progressing to jail.

Of course, the scammers say, you can modestly take care of all of these situations with some cash, transferred over to them in the form of a gift card.

Sounds weird? It necessity. Experts say it’s a red flag that you’re throughout to be scammed. 

“For me, there are no legitimate reasons to give someone else a gift card as part of any legitimate transaction apart from a holiday or birthday, especially someone you don’t know,” said Jonathan Couch, senior vice high-level for strategy at the cybersecurity firm ThreatQuotient.

If you reply by hanging up the phone, or deleting that mail or text, it necessity put a stop to things. But the sad pulling is, a lot of people don’t. Millions of bucks are stolen each year through gift card scams.

Scammers love gift cards because they’re easy for victims to buy but hard to trace. 

“Essentially, they are like cash,” said Aviv Grafi, chief technology officer and founder of the cybersecurity firm Votiro. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Which is why you may have noticed signs on the shelves next to gift cards at the local detain, warning that anyone asking you to pay for anything in gift cards is trying to scam you. So heed this communication if nothing else: No legitimate business will ever ask for payment in gift cards. Neither will any government agency, lawyer, tech support professional or online dating site. If someone asks you to pay them in gift cards, just hang up.

Here’s a quick look at how to spot a scam and what to do if you think you’ve fallen victim.

How to spot a scam

Many of the scams will initiate with emails or robocalls, then move to where you pronounce with someone, Couch said. The person on the requested will use social engineering to try to convince you to buy the gift cards, then read them the numbers over the phone.

Some scammers will try to convince victims that they work for the Internal Revenue Ceremony and are seeking the payment of taxes, then ask for that payment in the form of gift cards. Others make no bones about the fact that they’re criminals, claiming that they’ve taken over a victim’s bank define and threatening to empty it if they don’t get paid off with gift cards.

In some cases, scammers will convince victims that they’re going to send them cash, Couch said. They’ll convince victims to hand over access to a computer by asking them to install a remote connection with an app like TeamViewer or LogMeIn. Then they’ll ask the victims to log in to their bank elaborate to check that the transfer went through.

But once the victims are on their banking site, the scammers will modify the webpage code to show a additional of money that’s bigger than the one promised, he said. Then the scammers will ask for a refund of the difference in the form of gift cards. But in reality, that transferred money doesn’t exist.

One of the more convincing scams involves republic impersonating CEOs or other high-ranking officials at companies, said Ronnie Tokazowski, principal threat adviser for the phishing prevention firm Cofense.

The scammers will email or text employees at a given commercial, saying they need somewhere in the range of $500 to $2,000 to reward employees, or perhaps for gifts for family members.

In additional, though tech-support scams — which often involve convincing victims that their computer is either infected with a virus or be affected by to be updated — still primarily ask victims to “pay” with a credit card, some of the republic behind those scams are now also asking for gifts cards, Tokazowski said. 

Why gift cards?

Gift cards are popular by scammers because they’re easy to sell and virtually untraceable, said Pieter Arntz, malware intelligence researcher for the antivirus provider Malwarebytes.

And unlike with credit cards, where charges can be reversed, there aren’t any built-in consumer protections. Once a card is used, the money is gone for good. 

“If you do it sparkling, they are more anonymous than bitcoin,” Arntz said, noting that they can be bought, sold and exchanged anonymously. On top of that, they don’t prick a paper or digital trail, because most don’t obligatory the physical card to be used.

They’re also sold just near everywhere these days and are good for everything from restaurants to retail stories to streaming services, making them a lot easier for victims to buy than novel forms of payment like cryptocurrency.

What to do if you think you’ve been scammed

Usually with these types of scams, the cybercriminals are just after your money and rarely install malware or spyware on their victims’ computers. But, if you did give a scammer remote access to your computer, you should remove that access, Arntz said.

In the US, you can characterize the scam to the Federal Trade Commission, which is the main federal activity that collects those reports, he said. Giving the entity that’s populace impersonated a heads-up can be helpful, too.

Also, if you think you’re populace targeted because of your job, you should report it to your employer, experts say. And if you do think your work computer has been infected ended the scam, contact your IT department.

As for sketch your money back, that’s just not touching to happen. Much to the scammers’ benefit, gift cards don’t come with the same counterfeit protections as traditional bank cards do. 

As Grafi income, once the money on your card is gone, it’s gone.