Occasional fliers, when standing in line to remove their shoes at security, always glance longingly at us frequent flying types over in the PreCheck line. Our wait times are shorter, our laptops remain in our bags, and our shoes are still firmly attached to our feet. They wonder how they could ever access such luxury, how they could join the ranks of the PreCheck elite. Then, apparently, they get scammed.
Scammers aren’t targeting PreCheck members, but PreCheck hopefuls — offering expensive and unnecessary middleman services that promise to handle the tough minutiae of the easy and largely minutiae-free signup process. These scammers will buy Google ads, boosting their fake pages above legitimate results for PreCheck signup, then convince unknowing travelers to fork over their cash. SFGate spoke with the Transportation Security Administration about the scams:
Lorie Dankers, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, told SFGATE that the problem begins early in the process. Travelers sometimes search for TSA PreCheck enrollment online and mistakenly land on a website that does not provide the service but is designed to appear as if it does.
“People, because they don’t know what to expect, they’ve never enrolled before, go with these third-party companies that are not sanctioned by TSA to complete the enrollment,” Dankers said.
…The TSA only works with three accredited providers, which are found on its official website: Clear, Idemia and Telos. Clear, which separately offers a private skip-the-line service, charges the least for enrollment at $77.95. Idemia, with whom the TSA has worked since the program’s inception, charges $78. Telos charges the most at $85.
While third-party services tricking people into using them may not necessarily be illegal, no other accredited providers are working with TSA to run background checks or process information.
If you’re signing up for PreCheck through any service that isn’t Clear, Idemia, or Telos, you’re not signing up for PreCheck — you’re getting scammed. Even Clear, a genuine provider, rings some alarm bells for the truly privacy-conscious. The company collects far more biometric data than is really necessary, and while it claims to meet “the highest standards for data protection and privacy” the weakest link in any secure computer system is always its users. The safest option is to never have that sensitive information in a computer, which means sticking with one of the othe providers.
If you’re looking to get PreCheck, make sure you’re doing it through someone accredited. Better yet, make sure it’s Idemia or Telos — anything else is either trying to get your money, your biometric data, or both. You deserve to keep your shoes on all the way through the airport, but it shouldn’t cost you any more than it has to.
