Beauceron’s 2024 Holiday Cyber Safety Guide

As holiday shoppers – with their friends and family in mind – gear up to hunt for the best deals in-store and online, criminals are once again ramping up their scams.

The cybersecurity firm McAfee reportedly shut down clicks on more than 81,000 scams in the past months as “too-good-to-be-true deals” flooded onto the Internet. AI cybersecurity company Bfore.AI noted in its holiday season report that more than 6,000 fraudulent websites exist for brands such as Walmart, Amazon, Target and more.

But why is this season so dangerous when it comes to scams?

Emotions are high and what’s real becomes harder to discern.

There are two reasons why the holiday season turns into “Phishmas” for criminals. The first is the heightened emotions at play during this time of year. Those emotions include the excitement at finding a fantastic deal and the stress surrounding finding the perfect gift – on time. The second is the fact that our brains reward us when we accomplish a task quickly and save money; this is particularly true as more and more families are struggling with the high cost of living post-pandemic.

AI is making things worse.

Artificial intelligence is also making things worse this year:

• AI tools are powering more criminal campaigns, making it faster and easier to create convincing scam websites, better phishing e-mails and more targeted campaigns using more delivery channels including e-mail, text, social media messages and more.

• Cyber criminals use AI tools to create convincing customer support experiences using chatbots.

What can you do to stay safe?

It may feel overwhelming to think about how to stay safe from the surge in consumer fraud which hit a staggering $10 billion in the United States last year.

• Go directly to popular online stores, don’t use links in e-mails.

• Use online purchasing options like ApplePay, GooglePay, or AndroidPay, among others, to obscure your credit card information in the event the online retailer from whom you are buying is fake. Alternatively, use a lower-balance dedicated credit card for online shopping.

• If it sounds too good to be true, ask someone. Check the store website directly and call your local store to see if that door crasher deal is real.

• If you’re too excited, take a breath and allow yourself to calm down. This can give the rational decision-making areas of your brain a chance to consider any deals while calming down the emotional reaction that can often drive impulsive and risky decisions. Have a friend on standby to whom you can talk about such deals and see if they raise any red flags.

• Don’t use your work e-mail or phone number for your online or store accounts. This will help you avoid serendipitous phishing e-mails that impersonate trusted brands you are expecting e-mail from.

• Be wary of ads for deals on social media and search engines like Google. Criminals can buy these ads too for scams.

• Keep all the devices you’ll be using for online shopping updated with the latest software versions or security patches.

Be cautious of the older advice you may have been taught about cyber security. It used to be that you could trust sites that displayed a padlock icon in your browser. That is no longer the case; anyone, including criminals, can set up secure connections and settings that will result in that icon.

Technological tools alone can’t protect you from online scams. While tools such as e-mail filters and anti-virus (and more) are needed, they’re not foolproof. Scammers know how to beat them. Staying skeptical can save the day.

Having a game plan for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the holiday shopping season can not only help you avoid online scams, but it can also help you make sure any deal you find delivers on the promise it made you in the first place.