CHRISTMAS AND ONLINE SCAMS.
We must be clear that cyber-scammers will try to steal our personal information, so we will have to take measures to make it difficult for them, unless we want to make their Christmas merry.
It is estimated that Christmas 2014 will see holiday shopping increase to $616.9 billion and that online sales will rise by approximately 10%.
More than half of smartphone users will make purchases through their devices, and 4/5 of US households (with Internet access) will make online transfers.
McAfee has identified the «12 Christmas Scams», so if we don’t want to give gifts to these people, we should be very careful with:
1-Notifications of «you have a new message», which are probably false.
2-Deceptive advertising through dangerous and unknown links, fake contests and sweepstakes, counterfeit gift cards…
3-Deceptive charity, be careful with the companies or associations to which you make donations, as some of them are not real.
4-Online shopping without security: They should check that the charges they have planned are made correctly, so that if any incident occurs, measures can be taken in time.
5-Beware of iScams: Applications that are not secure and can access your personal information. Ideally, check that they are official and have adequate security.
6-Electronic greetings: As with applications, you should check that the page is safe, and that what you are sending is not malware, as the person in question will download one without thinking about it. It is best to never download any file if you do not know what it is.
7-Travel deals: They may have fake links that redirect you to spyware sites.
8-Calls from banks: Supposedly revoking charges that have been made fraudulently, but the purpose is to get data, such as cards and passwords of the same.
9-Installation of «skimming» devices in ATMs to steal the codes of the magnetic strips.
10-The news about cheating could be the cheating itself.
11-Protection of devices, as some devices are vulnerable to being lost or stolen and then manipulated by hackers.
12-Malicious advertising gifts such as USB sticks with pre-installed malware.
If you want to read the original and complete news, you can do it here:
http://www.networkworld.es/seguridad/los-12-timos-online-de-navidad
Greetings from your computer expert.
