As we saw with major holidays including Black Friday and Cyber Monday and now right around the corner and a massive increase in shopping online for the Christmas season, we count the breaches and total personally identifiable information records lost reaching the billions.
Most of them include personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, credit cards, emails, phone numbers, passwords and many have medical records information in them.
With major holidays and online shopping, Cybercrime is not going away - it's huge.
Apps you trust like Facebook that turn on your microphone and listen in on your conversations is creepware - they admit in their End User License Agreement that you've become the product, by accepting their EULA and installing their application.
Spyware is criminal software disguised as 'cool' apps.
Examples - flashlight apps, deepfake facial video apps, emoji keyboards.
Every day, there's a cybercriminal somewhere in the world looking to gain access to your identity and credit.
Assume most of your smartphone or tablet apps are malware that spies on you and your online behavior.
On an iPhone, you're not being eavesdropped on until you run the app.
I've discovered flashlight apps, bible apps and emoji keyboard apps that appear trustworthy and turn out to be spyware that passed the 'security' tests by Google Play and Apple iTune online app stores.
You really need to know who made the app, what permissions it really needs If an app uses too many permissions, or has a strange website or no customer support telephone number and the developers won't answer your emails, better to delete the app and find one from someone you can trust and if they lose your identity, someone you can sue or get some form of reparations for the damages of identity theft.
Teach your children to be smart about who they talk to online and let them know that meeting a stranger at a mall that they met online could lead to their kidnapping.
If their shopping-cart experience is not an HTTPS browser session, then everything you type in - your name, address and credit card information - is going over the Internet unencrypted, in plain view.
Never buy online using your credit card on a site that doesn't have SSL encryption installed.
You should see an icon of a locked padlock in your browser and the website URL starts with HTTPS not HTTP. Also, if you receive emails from the merchant, no matter the reason, don't give them your credit card information over email.
You have three major choices when shopping - cash, credit or debit.
If you have to choose among these options, the best is the credit card.
Here's why: If you experience identity theft, credit card laws allow you to keep all of your credit immediately, with no responsibility during an identity theft or fraud investigation.
There's online dating scams where your future soulmate asks you for money online because they need the money for the plane ticket to see you.
Never give your credit card or personal information to anyone over the phone, especially if they are calling you.
This Cyber News was published on www.cyberdefensemagazine.com. Publication date: Fri, 08 Dec 2023 05:43:32 +0000