Cyber Monday is becoming more and more popular in Ireland, not only for us beady eye bargain hunters but also for criminals to create scams that lure unsuspecting victims.
Monday morning, billions of people will power up their devices and connect to the internet to shop for the best deals and get their Christmas affairs in order. As more and more people do this, they become an easy target for cyber criminals. It is critical to know how to prevent these attacks from happening and make it more challenging for hackers to enter your system and steal information, identity or money.
Below are the easy tips to ensure that you stay safe online during this busy holiday period.
- Use familiar sites
Type in the domain name of the site you are looking for rather than using search engines if possible. The search results may be rigged to lead you astray and entice you to give your information to an unsecure site.
- Always look for the padlock
If the site doesn’t have SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. This ensures that the data transferred between the web browser and the website is encrypted. The website should start with HTTPS:// instead of HTTP://
- Don’t give out too much information
When shopping online, no website will need all of your information such as your birthday, PPS. If criminals get hold of these they can do a lot of damage combined with your credit card number.
- Secure your PC
Criminals don’t always take the laid back approach, waiting for you to give your data online. Your PC must be protected against malware with regular updates to your anti-virus program. If you are worried that you may not be protected please give us a call and we can help.
- Avoid public WIFI when shopping online
At this stage we should have all seen RTE’s Hacked, if not watch it. We have a link to the programme on our Facebook page. In the show we could see that cyber criminals can watch every move you make on a public WIFI platform. Using a public WIFI hotspot could be dangerous if not secure so if you are unfamiliar with this, we would recommend that you do your online shopping on a network that you know and trust.
- If it’s too good to be true it may not be true
Criminals are constantly looking for ways to lure you to a malware site with the sole intention of stealing your information. Be cautious when searching for deals on line that do seem too good to be true, in a lot of cases these are tactics employed by a cyber-criminal.
With all of these tips in mind, enjoy Black Friday/ Cyber Monday and happy/ safe shopping!
– Laura Kavanagh (Marketing -Radius Technologies Waterford, Ireland)
Radius Technologies Blog 