With the holiday season, also known as the “shopping season” finally over, we thought it would be time to sit back and reflect on what was actually going on behind the scenes of online shopping last year. Although many of you feel that you didn’t have any malware problems and your shopping experience was great, there is a 33% chance that your computer is infected.
An identity protection company recently did a survey of 200,000 households over 30 days, and the results showed that 33% of the households contracted malware infections on their computers. With that in mind, we wanted to take a look at some of the top online shopping scams that you could have run into last year and that you should look out for this year.
Browser Exploitation
Out-of-date browser technology is a problem in many work environments. Users who haven’t installed the latest browser updates are at much bigger risk of landing on a malicious site after a simple typo. One slip on the keyboard could bring you to a site like 'Maky.com' when you are really looking for Macy's site or 'iBay.com' instead of eBay. Often sites with an address that is one letter off from a popular, legitimate site will be designed to look like the site you intended to go to, but instead it’s filled with bad links.
Older browsers aren’t as secure as the newer versions. More current versions have better sandboxes, better controls and better ways of detecting malicious sites. Be sure to keep your browser up-to-date.
Smishing
This is the mobile version of “Phishing”. Instead of receiving an email from a company you know such as your bank, PayPal, or postal delivery companies, you receive a SMS text message on your cellphone. The message tells you to call a toll free number, which is answered by a bogus interactive voice response system set up specifically to try to fool you into providing your account number and password.
Tiny Charges
Thieves get a hold of your credit or debit card number and make very small charges from 20 cent to $10. The charges will appear on your account with a corporate name and a fictitious toll free number that is either out of service or you’re instructed to leave a voicemail when you try to call to inquire about the charge.
Social Scams
Scam links on social networks are becoming more and more common. Cyber criminals will set up fake sites then send out links about sales and deals that will take you back to their malicious sites. These links will often be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
This year there will be new and improved scams but this should at least give you an idea of what to look for. Although the best defense for online scams is caution and common sense, some malware and scams are very difficult to avoid. Even if your computer has the latest anti-virus and spyware protection updates, the criminals are always a step ahead of us and the protection is not created until after the new malware has been created.
SafeCentral’s WebProtection™ is an extra level of security to add to your computer. It allows you a safe browser experience, data protection, and secure online transactions, even if your computer is already infected.
WebProtection™ offers many benefits giving you peace of mind when transacting online such as:
- Patented technology to block key-loggers, screen-scrapers and other malware agents, even on an already infected PC
- SecureDNS to ensure a connection to the actual site, eliminating man-in-the-middle attacks
- Automated "launch anywhere" protection for seamless integration into your existing browsing habits
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