You have to make a stop to pick something up and you park in a place where you would hope you’ll be fine for 3 minutes. When you come out, you realized it’s one of those days - you already have a parking ticket in your windshield.

The issuer is a department of your city’s administrative offices and they ask you to pay online - that looks perfectly normal. The trouble is that scammers have become increasingly sophisticated – the ticket looked official enough and the website for paying looks fine but it’s a scam.

How to avoid: check that the website starts with “https” in the browser (look for the letter “s” at the end of “http”, as every secure payment website has that). If in doubt, call the city and require about the authenticity of the ticket you’ve got.