It is that time of year. Holiday shopping, Black Friday, Cyber Monday (that still sounds like a XXX movie), and the like. Special offers abound, and the bad guys are ready to get you. Some simple steps to stay safer during the holidays.
This is the time of year that the criminal digital underground loves. People rushing to get the best deals they can, be it online or offline. The odds of someone clicking on a malicious link, increases with desperation, and of course making the deals looks good. Nothing will 100% guarantee that your going to be free of malware, or that your identity will not be swiped, but there are some simple things to remember to keep the risks at more of a minimum.
1) If it looks to be too good of a deal, it probably is, especially online. Deals are the easiest thing to snag someone online with. Pair that with fake URLs that look legit, and you have a recipe for disaster. The trick here is to find out what the real URL is. In Outlook and most browsers out can hover over links to see what they are sending you to. Doing a right click and copy hyperlink then pasting into notepad is a good way to see the full link itself for a quick check. If it shows something that bothers you, don’t go to it, don’t click on it.
2) Keep up to date with your purchases. This is easy enough to do with online banking. Check at minimum once a week online with your bank and credit card companies. Look for anything out of the ordinary. the faster you see something that looks fraudulent the faster things can be taken care of, and the less hassle there is overall.
3) Single Click on the web! I see this all too often. We as a society have gotten so use to double clicking to open programs that we forget it is a single click on a link. This is important because that second click could hit a hijacked ad on the site you were going to and at that point it is game over. You are pwnd and let the malware flood gates open.
4) Backup Backup Backup. Get an external drive that you only connect to backup your files, Use Mozy or Carbonite, do something to backup your files. Especially with Cryptolocker out there, the clean backup is important so you don’t have to pay to recover your files and take the risk that the bad guys are not going to keep their end of the bargain.
5) If you do not have to enter your pin on a pad, DON’T! Most bank cards can be used as “Credit Cards” (They have the Mastercard or Visa logo on them) meaning you do not have to punch in your security pin. Who knows if that pin pad is secure. Yes it only stops the pin from being gotten but that can be enough to stop someone from emptying your account.
Yes, these are basics, and yes milli0ns of people each year tend to not think about them. They are simple and pretty effective, but remember not perfect. If someone hacks the store or bank, you have no control over that. If the credit card or ATM machine has been tampered with, you don’t have control over that. Just do what you can to keep a little safer, and have a great holiday season!
-Shecky