Hacking for the Holidays
The holiday spam and phishing lures are on the way. As sure as stores will open early on Friday and shoppers start their annual treks to the mall or Amazon.com, the scammers will be pushing wares. From ComputerWorld we get advice from Paul Henry of Secure Computing who warns:
A common scam is to pick the hot toy of the season and send out a spam e-mail blast offering it for much less than the typical price, Henry says. Victims end up entering credit card information on malicious sites designed to look like well-known, trusted ones. They might also unknowingly download a keylogger that can steal personal information people type in when making any kind of Internet transaction.SC Magazine also has an article on the start of the holiday scams with Cyber Monday:
"The Monday after Thanksgiving is known as Cyber Monday and it's the biggest holiday shopping day of the year," said Ron Teixeira, executive director of the NCSA."Last year, Cyber Monday online sales generated a record $608m compared to $457.4m on Black Friday."
The article offers basic advice about install anti-virus software and checking for the SSL padlock in your address bar. Even better, look for vendors that use Extended Validation SSL Certificates, they'll display a green bar in the address line. Companies go through extra verification to ensure they are legitimate so it's harder for phishers to get those than conventional SSL certificates.
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