Starting on Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday and beyond, consumers are estimated to spend a whopping $143 billion throughout the 2019 holiday shopping season, according to Adobe Analytics, and all that money changing hands means cyber-criminals will be targeting both you and the online retailers you trust, now more than ever. Some hackers, like the ones who struck Macy’s in October, strike merchants’ websites directly. Many more scams, however, are designed to lure you away from legitimate sellers and steer you toward malicious sites or apps that often spoof familiar retailers like Amazon, Best Buy & Walmart.
Recent Research on RiskIQ blacklisted nearly 1,000 apps using holiday-related terms that the security company deemed to be malicious, as well as over 6,000 apps infringing on copyrighted names and slogans from popular retailers to reel in unsuspecting victims. RiskIQ also blacklisted 65 websites posing as popular retailers in an attempt to fool you into giving up your personal information.
As always, your best defense against these kinds of schemes, scams, frauds and cons is to arm yourself with knowledge so you can sniff them out when you run into them. With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about (not) getting duped this holiday season.
#CyberDeals #CyberSteals #BuyerBeware #Hackers #HolidayScams #SmartShopper 
