The following Monday right after the Black Friday marks the Cyber Monday. The Cyber Monday is the ceremony that kicks-off online holiday shopping season. Undoubtedly, this is the day when online shoppers and retailers look forward as shoppers are happy shopping with generous shopping deals and retailers are happy selling to large crowd of customers. Hence, hackers and cyber criminals come out with their heinous scams and hacking plans to trick shoppers and retailers to make money. That’s why unsuspecting buyers and shoppers fall into hackers’ impish traps and incur substantial losses. Fake shopping deals and promotions with hidden costs, sham e-commerce websites to hack credit card information, virus and malware intrusion to victims’ computers, false allure of shopping gifts and the like are most common forms of online frauds used by these hackers and malicious users. Luckily there are ways to identify these online tricks and shop safe.
Tune-up your PC with Protecting System
Your PC is your device to make purchase and transact money; hence, the first step must be giving adequate protection to your PC. You must safeguard your PC by installing additional antimalware patch and software, adding firewall, and advanced protection system which is especially designed for online shopping.
Research on ‘Amazing’ deals before you give in to
Beware of too tempting shopping deals and that offer products at excessively cheap rates. You can study the range of offers available on the same product on other websites to figure out if the offer looks exceptionally amazing. It is better to resist such offers that scream impossibly cheap prices.
Avoid shopping deals on unsolicited mails
Do not follow links of those unsolicited mails from unknown senders. Such links are likely to redirect you to websites that are devised to install malicious files to your PC or hack your personal information. These websites acquire your personal or financial information to sell it to black market or advertisers.
Along with these precautions, you must be cautious to check the lock symbol in the Wi-Fi connection dialog to prevent stealing of personal data. Restrict to only those websites that have ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://’ and a lock symbol, sites that contain accreditation of ‘BBB’ (Better Business Bureau), sites that promise gifts or cash for answering to simple questions (like do you like Pepsi or Coke?) etc.
Perhaps, one of the best way is to just stay with recognized websites such as Amazon and Gamestop (for gamers.) These websites are trusted brands and would never do something that will tarnish their reputation.