Tech Shout

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As the holiday season wafts in, a lot of people tend to loosen their purse strings for the inevitable shopping and donating to charity as well. McAfee has cautioned people with a list of popular cybercrimes that the festive season proliferates. They have dubbed it the Twelve Scams of Christmas and provide five useful tips to counter these attacks.

Many a generous soul has had their credit card or identity stolen by charity phishing scams that are devised to steal donations too. Users have been cheated into revealing credit card details or opening online invoice or customs forms by bogus invoice and delivery e-mail notifications. Other methods used by cybercriminals to steal personal information or plant malware in their victims’ PCs include deploying friend request e-mails, holiday e-cards, or web links for specially discounted luxury jewelry.

“Cybercriminals’ use their best schemes during the holidays to steal people’s money, credit card information, social security number and identity,” cautioned Jeff Green, senior VP of McAfee Labs. “These thieves follow seasonal trends and create holiday-related Web sites, scams and other convincing e-mails that can trick even the most cautious users.”

McAfee also cautions people against carrying out online shopping from public PCs or open Wi-Fi hotspots due to escalating ID thefts. Other potential risks faced by users are links that come up when they launch a search for holiday-related content like Christmas carols, ringtones or wallpapers which lead them to spyware, adware and similarly dangerous programs. Job-related scams where seekers are asked to pay a set-up amount and then left hanging is another rising scam. E-mail banking, ransomware, password stealing and auction site frauds are also increasing alarmingly.

McAfee advises people to protect their ID and PCs by updating their security software, going to a company’s official website directly instead of clicking on e-mailed links and shopping or banking on secured networks only. Users can also secure their online accounts by ensuring that they use different passwords for each account and most importantly, bank on common sense to judge the legitimacy of a product or offer.

The company rounds off their advice with a tip-off about website URLs starting with https:// being more secure than those beginning with http://. Those who suspect that they may be a victim of cybercrime can visit McAfee’s online Cybercrime Response Unit to receive guidance on the next pertinent step that they should follow.