Cyber-Scrooges Set in Motion the 12 Scams of Holidays @McAfeeConsumer

It does. Coming up in just a couple minutes, we're going to talk about the 12 Scams of Christmas, what you need to know about if you shop online, if you're a cyber shopper, or if you get a lot of stuff, you know, charities around the holidays.

It's not the holiday carol as we know it, the 12 Scams of Christmas.

It is not.

But important nonetheless.

All right, Shannon, thank you. We're heading to the time of the year where the spirit of giving is in the air. Goodwill toward men. But not everyone shares that sentiment. Online scammers find this to be the It's their most wonderful time of the year. Never mind the 12 Days of Christmas, cyber shoppers need to be aware of the 12 scams of Christmas. Robert Siciliano is a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert. He joins us live from our Beacon Hill studio this morning. I find it hard to believe, Robert, that scammers would be out this time of year. Do they look at this like as their Black Friday?

This is definitely their time of the year to get paid. They see that we're throwing our credit cards all over the place, we're entering personal information over the internet, and throughout the year they're building up to this one moment and here we are today.

They're ready to pounce. Let's go through them one by one here, 'cause there's a lot for folks to be aware of, and it's really through means that we all use this time of year. Number 1, let's start with social media scams.

Social media scams are when your followers, the people you follow, or your friends, their pages are infected, and they might have links in their page that you click, and that link might infect your actual, uh, computer and compromise your information.

All right, look out for that. Uh, number 2, malicious mobile apps.

So 1 in 4 people are actually using their mobile phones to shop this year, and the Android phones are the most vulnerable. Applications that can infect your device and steal your personal information.

All right, be aware of that. Also, people like to travel this time of year. Number 3, travel-related scams.

Travel scams have always been big all year long, especially today in hotels. The, the Wi-Fi, the free Wi-Fi— bad guys are setting themselves up in hotels and infecting your browser.

Alright, what about holiday spam, the number 4 on our list here?

So spam and phishing, you receive emails that look like they're coming from legitimate e-tailers. Essentially, they're designed to get your personal information. Just hit delete.

Alright, wanna talk now about number 5, iPhone and iPad scams. What are you talking about here particularly?

So basically, the hot product of the year is always a problem. Bad guys set up quizzes and contests and web pages to get— to lure you to those sites to give you, you know, really great deals. But in fact are fake, again designed to get credit card information and personal data.

The old, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is." Right. Keep that in mind if you get a deal that comes your way. Let's look at number 6 now, which are Skype message scares. This sounds something a little strange. I'm not aware of this one.

So we talked about this. Actually, this is when you're on Skype and you get an instant message saying, you know, "There's a funny picture of you, check it out." You click that link and that link actually infects your PC and the bad guy holds your data for ransom.

So they can hit you anyway here.

Yes.

Scam apps, links through email, you name it, you gotta be on top of this. Let's go on to bogus gift cards now, number 7.

So gift cards are a problem, especially on these third-party sites that you don't really know who they are. You find the best deal online, but really you should buy gift cards from legitimate brick-and-mortar retailers and use them immediately.

All right, let's move on to our next one here 'cause we're running low on time. Holiday smishing, I believe you call this, deals with texts, is that correct?

Smishing is to phishing what text messages are to mobile phones. Basically, you receive an infected text message, click that link, it compromises your device.

All right, and what about number 9 now? We're talking about phony e-tailers.

Basically, these are websites that are set up around the holidays designed to look like legitimate e-tailers like Best Buy or Amazon. Once you go there, enter your personal information, they get your credit card data, and they're gonna make unauthorized charges without you knowing about it.

One of the worst scams they have, which they're really preying on people this time of year, fake charities.

Yeah, especially with Hurricane Sandy, thousands of domains are being registered with the word "Sandy" in them. Just donate to redcross.org.

All right, number 11 too, Robert. Dangerous e-cards. What can you tell us about that?

So e-cards used to be just text across the screen. Now they're multimedia with video and audio. And within that technology, there's all kinds of scams that can occur. So really, tell people just to send you a paper card because that's what you really want anyways.

And lastly, number 12, phony classifieds.

Classifieds have always been a problem this time of the year with online dating. People are lonely, they put ads online in classifieds. Just be aware of what personal information you're plugging in and don't ever, you know, send money for shipping scams.

There's no shortage of ways they can rip you off. It's remarkable.

There isn't. So make sure you protect your PCs with antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, and a firewall. And don't give out personal information. And check your credit card statements frequently around this time of the year.

Great information, great advice as always, Robert Siciliano. We appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.

Thank you.