How Online Sales Scams are Happening!

According to Norton’s Cyber Security Insights Report, Online fraudsters are most commonly using Click and Receive, text phishing and offer alert scams to get the money from users.

This online crime has affected approximately 590 million people worldwide in 2015. Most of the cases came from United Kingdom. Every one in seven victim from United Kingdom told about hijacking of his financial credentials during online shopping. Millions of people have also face the problem personal information leakage. Scammers had stolen personal identities of 13 million people. These are the approximate figures.

A number of online fraud scams have been revealed by Norton’s Cyber Security Insights this January. Scammers are doing all this in different ways like:

1.Text Phishing: Sometimes scammers send fake text messages to the people same as bank. In message they wrote that there are some suspicious activities going in their bank accounts, so please tell us PIN code or other sensitive data related to financial accounts. This is called Text phishing. Another technique is called Vishing, which happened with mobile phone. But the purpose of message remains same.

2.Fake Websites: Scammers are also targeting people by making fake websites, which look likes the popular online sites and have fake domain names related to original domain names.

3.Click and Receive: In this case scammers sends emails to people, saying that they have won a gift voucher and Just click here to got your prize. Scammers can collect sensitive information from here, which they can use for other illegal purposes.

4.Refund Pop-ups: In this technique scammers are using some pop-ups which are directly connected to a controlled database. They gave messages like “For refunds click here”, “Worried about wrong transaction, click here to get money back” etc. They can collect financial information of people using this fraud.

5.Fake off Sale Offers: This is another type of pop-ups. Scammers are using this technique as Honey-Pot. They gave messages to people through these pop-ups like “50% off sale”, “Special Offer’ and “Your Discount Voucher is here” etc. Millions of people had lost their financial details.

Some Tips for Online Shoppers:

1. Do not click on fake website’s links. Look very carefully on the web addresses of websites and relate it with original.

2. Do not fill your passwords on suspicious forms.

3. Shop only from trusted websites and don’t fall for the cheap price tags.

4. Time-to-time check your credit card statements.

5. Do not use public WiFi networks for online shopping.

6. Use proper antivirus and anti-malware techniques.

Source: scmagazine.com