Nothing kills the shopping spirit like identity theft. You’d be lying if you said you had never been intrigued by a Black Friday deal, had a cheeky look or even bought something! With Black Friday and Cyber Monday being two of the most hectic days of the year in shopping history this unfortunately comes with its downfalls. In the frantic rush to complete your order, with the panic of your bargain going out of stock, you enter all your personal details without a second thought… sounds bad when I say it like that doesn’t it?
With hackers being as experienced and as skilled as ever, the public need to become more vigilant as to what personal information they put where. Hackers operate in a variety of ways but often rely on consumers simply failing to adequately secure their accounts with complex passwords. Now we are all guilty of being abit lazy and just putting ‘password123’ as our passwords, I am guilty of it myself, however this pretty much gives hackers an invitation to hack your account and steal personal details.
Now here’s the need to know info:
A company would never ask for personal information over email!! Phishing emails are a huge issue as hackers copy information from a company’s logo to false links and then email you asking for personal information. In simple terms – just because you see a large eBay logo, for example, doesn’t mean it’s from that brand, anyone can copy and paste off Google. Hackers like to give their victims a sense of urgency within these emails to create a panic, this panic then causes you to click a dodgy link or attach your personal bank details. So be aware.
Whilst reading this ask yourself – are you connected to a Wi-Fi network? If that’s a yes, now ask yourself – is that a public open Wi-Fi network? If that’s a yes…QUICKLY DISCONNECT. One of hacker’s main tactics is to get into your phone whilst you are sharing the same public Wi-Fi network. With these Black Friday deals selling fast, we are connecting to whatever we can when we can, with that being public Wi-Fi.
I know this blog may have made you feel like you never want to look at a cyber deal again but don’t be too scared. Putting these scary reminders aside it’s not rocket science to keep cyber safe, just follow the rules and be aware of sneaky hackers.