Online Shopping – Beware of these 4 Holiday Season Scams!

Christmas and New Year bells are ringing around the corner. While everyone’s thrilled to the bits for shopping and fun, it’s also the time when cyber criminals make use of their best tactics to steal the money of online shoppers. You never know when a website from where you have purchased some gifting stuff using your credit card is a ‘Scam’!

Having knowledge about the most popular tricks used for carrying out fraudulent activities on the internet could help you beat such threats. Have a look:

Online Charity Scams:

During the holiday season, hackers send emails to online users that ask them to donate money for a notable cause. However, these are phishing emails that redirect users to fake websites to steal their online banking details and other important information. So one need to check the authenticity of the charitable trust to make sure that the donation goes in the right hands.

Social Networking Scams:

Social media platforms are quite commonly used by people around the world. However, getting that ‘new friend request’ email could put their financial status at risk. These fraudulent emails from hackers when clicked by the user, install infectious software on their systems that steal their personal information.

Travel Scams:

Many people around the world travel to popular destinations to celebrate festivities with family and folks. When booking flights and accommodations for the same, scammers will try to lure you with attractive deals at low prices. But in the meanwhile, they attempt to grab your confidential information. So think before you buy!

Mobile Apps Scams:

Since apps are in huge trend these days, online scammers try to entice online users with eye catchy apps that need to be installed on their smartphones. However, these malicious apps can modify, lock or delete users’ phone data and can even make changes to their phone’s privacy settings.

The best way to keep yourself safe from such threats is to act cautiously and install a reliable anti-malware program on your PC and mobile. Having done that would safeguard you from getting your personal info into someone else’s hands.