Thursday, November 1, 2012

Holiday Hacks are upon us again

Today I found a very nice article on the CSO Security News site called The 12 Cons of Christmas by Joan Goodchild (CSO (US)).

In this article she points out that this is the time of the year when the fraudsters and phishers are out in force.  Or as Joan put it:
While the risk of being hacked, conned or having sensitive information stolen is possible all through the year, most security experts agree that the holiday season brings a spike in fraudulent activity, both online and off.

Hot Holiday items are lures

With the increased use of Facebook and Twitter they can get more information about what you want and can use that to better target you. To make it worse, the scammers have learned not to be so obvious, and "the signs that made scams so obvious before are no longer always present as more sophisticated techniques employed by criminals on Twitter and Facebook make it harder than ever to know what's legit."

Take a look at the article for some good hints on how to detect these scams and protect yourself.  
Full article: http://www.cso.com.au/article/440664/12_cons_christmas/