Black Friday & Cyber Monday-Week Hacks
Hackers and businesses both have one thing in common this shopping spree holiday season: your money. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday here soon - everyone is scrambling to find deals and gifts. And, while businesses hope for higher for revenue and profits - for many businesses, they also see a huge spike in malicious schemes.
Due to impulse buys, shoppers become careless and don’t always think about the threats.
Did you really think we were going to write a Black Friday / Cyber Monday blog without mentioning hackers taking advantage of the situation?
The reasoning behind phishing escalating around Black Friday / Cyber Monday comes from the overwhelming amount of data in retailers’ systems. Shoppers become careless and don’t always think about the threats.
How does this get so out of hand? Impulse buys make us less calculated on what purchases we should make – and how we make them.
And as if retail employees didn’t have enough on their hands for this shopping frenzy period - the pressure coming from supply chains, and consumers keeping up with demands, it becomes overwhelming and may leave them neglecting their systems to satisfy customers.
Cybercriminals take advantage of the urgent deal ads and craft their own, sending them through a realistic email or copying the link of a website, making their own, and framing it so convincingly you’ve just fallen into their trap. All the usual information you write down when checking out - your email, phone number, and credit card number - it’s a recipe for disaster. So before you shop from that email or maybe type in the wrong site name, or click on a scam link - keep your eyes open!
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