Articles by the cybersecurity community

Protect yourself from #cybercrime - seasonal scams

Any significant retail event or seasonal holiday makes for great hashtagcybercrime attempts!

While people are looking forward to seasonal holidays, buying gifts and getting bagains, criminals are looking forward to exploit them.

Looking for online bargains? Please check the spelling of the link you are on as criminals buy and register web domains with common typos of well known stores. Just to trick shoppers and steal their PII and money.

So many successful seasonal sales on legitimate websites, leads to criminals creating faked retailer pages to trick shoppers into sharing their money and details with them. Criminals are known to buy website domain names that are typos of legitimate sites and also to buy certificates to ensure the website is ‘HTTPS’ making it appear legitimate. For example, say that a major retailer has a site called ‘https happysales com’, a criminal may purchase a site with security certification and words that look similar, ‘https happysalles com’. They may even send spam emails spoofing well known retailers and direct people to their site where they phish for credit card details and personal information.
When taking advantage of seasonal sales and bargains don't let criminals take advantage of you!
  • Check website addresses before you enter any details.
  • Only enter financial information on secured connections and also do not enter any personal or financial detail while on free WiFi.
  • Do not provide more information than needed. Do they really need your fill birth date to sell you a magazine subscription?
  • Be wary of discounts that sound too good to be true – because they probably are!