One unfortunate side effect of the holidays is that there tend to be a number of scams created as a means to defraud trusting individuals who just wanted to do some holiday shopping or download an app as a gift for a family member. Because this time of the year sees an increase in such cyber-threats, it’s important to do what you can to avoid danger, and a new report out of Chicago relates how to do that.
First, you should never provide information to anyone who gets in touch with you without your prompting. If the person claiming to be your bank or credit card company was legitimate, they would not call you to ask for your account numbers.
Because this is the holiday season, there are bound to be messages purporting to be from retailers offering deals that seem too good be true. These offers probably are too good to be true, designed to get you to hand over card numbers or click over to a website that infects your computer or mobile device. Don’t respond to emails, social queries, and even text messages unless you can be positive you signed up for some type of alert service from a legitimate enterprise.
Finally, don’t think that an app’s appearance on the Windows or Android app store means that it is genuine. Some apps may in fact be designed to leech onto your device and infect it with malware, so if Angry Birds is spelled Angry Birdz, you may want to steer clear of this dangerous impostor.