Spotting opportunity, scammers have swooped in like vultures to prey on people – many facing desperate travel needs – and extract money from them with various scams. In one of them, scammers use bots to swoop in and book available time slots at the State Department’s passport agencies and then sell those slots to desperate people for hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.
The situation got so bad that on July 21 the State Department “temporarily disabled” its online booking system for Urgent Travel Service, saying on its website that it did so “due to the problem of third parties booking appointments online using automated programs, or bots, and then selling these appointments to customers with urgent travel needs.”
One week later, the service was still disabled, and people needing urgent passports were instructed to phone the agency’s 877 number. But some media stories say people have been unable to get through by calling.
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