Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not only peak season for online shopping but for cybercriminals too.
Criminals are out to steal your personal information …
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not only peak season for online shopping but for cybercriminals too. Criminals are out to steal your personal information and credit card details, and usually they’re pretty successful. Over 2 billion account details were stolen and circulating on the cybercriminal underground after last year’s holiday shopping season, according to computer security giant McAfee. That annual mega-heist of sensitive information is serious enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a fresh warning on Tuesday urging consumers to be “vigilant” about cyber scams. “Be especially cautious of fraudulent sites spoofing reputable businesses, unsolicited emails purporting to be from charities, and unencrypted financial transactions,” CISA said. If you use a payment method like Apple Pay or PayPal, the payment data is typically “tokenized” – rendering the data unusable to cybercriminals. Shopping on major retailers like Amazon is typically safe because your credit card data is already stored on the site.
