Oct-Dec is a festival season in India– and with the holidays comes unlimited opportunities for cyber-thugs to exploit. While users prepare for the festivities, cybercriminals look for opportunities to cheat users with various cyber fraud tricks. To explore more on how these crooks are doing it, McAfee surveyed over 8,000 adults over the age of 18 across multiple countries from October 10-20, 2019 on the types of scams they’ve encountered this year.

The Scams of Christmas Present

During the holidays, cyber-crooks do scams of Christmas Present. For example, many people in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Australia, India, and Singapore confirmed that they had fallen victim to fake charity scams in 2019., cybercriminals are well aware of the fact that people would like to donate during this festival season every year. So, the trick they adopt is- they pose as a charity online as a ploy to collect financial data and money from unsuspecting users.

During this festive season, a lot of their holiday shopping online, users have reported of  shipping notification scams. These scams prove that with increasing role of technology into people’s everyday lives, they are in turn giving cybercriminals more opportunities to exploit them during the holiday season.

Most of the users are well aware that cyber-scams become more prevalent during the holiday season, but they don’t take steps to change their online behavior.

To help ensure your holiday season goes off without any hassle, follow these tips to help stay secure:

• Avoid robocalls with a powerful app. You are recommended to download the app Robokiller that will stop robocalls before you even pick up. The app makers are updating the block list on a constant basis and keep user’s security as a top priority
• Go directly to the source. It’s the best practice to be skeptical of emails or texts claiming to be from companies or charities with peculiar asks or messages for money. Please avoid clicking on a link within the email or text message. It is recommended to go straight to the company’s website or contact customer service.
• Verify the URL by hovering over links: If you get an email with a link, hover over the link without actually clicking on it. It will allow you to see a link preview. If the URL looks suspicious, don’t interact with it and delete the email altogether.
• Use a comprehensive security solution from a reputed company. Using a solution recommended by a leading Cyber Security System Integration company such as SNS security can help your holiday season go smoothly without any security breaches  Visit https://www.snsin.com/ for details