This content was created by Robert Siciliano. This content was uploaded by Robert Siciliano. This is a YouTube video titled "Beware of Cyber Monday Scams @McAfeeConsumer" (recorded December 1, 2013). It is a short interview/conversation on holiday online-shopping scams between host Simon Constable and Robert Siciliano, McAfee's online security expert. They discuss common seasonal threats such as malicious third‑party mobile apps, SMS phishing ('smishing'), and fake hot‑gift offers that lead to phishing or device infection, and advise sticking to official app stores and avoiding too‑good‑to‑be‑true links.
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Welcome to Digit. I'm Simon Constable. Christmas is around the corner, and with online shopping becoming a bigger part of the consumer, and identity thieves and scams are not far behind. In fact, it's the season for scams. McAfee, the computer security software company, has released its list of Christmas scams you need to avoid like the plague. Robert Siciliano, McAfee's online security expert, joins me now. Thank you for being there, sir. Thank you. So let's go through, through a few of these. The not-so-merry mobile apps. What do you What do you mean by that?
So consumers are using their mobile phones to shop. I do, and I know many others do. And when you download applications for this purpose, applications themselves should come from either Google Play or from Apple's iTunes. Often many consumers are going outside of the walled gardens and they're getting apps from third-party stores, and the apps generally are not approved by Google or Apple, which means that they may be laced with malware. So when you download these apps from the third-party stores, you could infect your device, which ultimately infects your usernames and passwords and gives the bad guy access to credit card information.
And when you get them from a reputable store like iTunes, it's been, it's been checked out and made okay. Now you also mentioned holiday mobile SMS scams. What is an SMS scam? Scam?
So SMS is, you know, short message service. And what bad guys do is they'll send out text messages, what's called smishing, which is a text message— smishing is phishing like email, but they'll send links to too good to be true product offerings. And once you click those links, you're either going to go down a rabbit hole providing your credit card information to a rogue e-tailer, or you can infect your devices.
—well, that doesn't sound like fun. So free iPads, probably not the one to click on there. Hot holiday gift scams, what would that be?
So hot holiday gift scams, every year, whether it's for adults or for kids, there's some hard-to-get gift. And bad guys are sending out millions of emails with these hard-to-get gifts in the email or the text message saying, click on this link, go to this website, you can get a good deal on it. And more than likely you're going to get phished.
Now, that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It's, it's sad that people bring scams to this beautiful time of year. We appreciate your time, sir. Robert Siciliano, McAfee's online security expert.
