Nordvpn- Online shopping increase to lead to cybercrimes

According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping is expected to grow by 33% this holiday season because of the lockdowns.

For some retailers, the Black Friday bargain hunt can generate up to half of their annual sales. For fraudsters, it’s a great opportunity to capitalise on the rush.

Adobe Analytics research- Rise in online shopping to increase cybercrime

According to the Cyber Risk Index (CRI) calculated by NordVPN, residents of developed countries are more likely to become victims of cybercrime despite the fact that they consider themselves tech-savvy and well-protected.

For example, Ireland ranks 7th globally with a CRI score of 0.664, which is considered as a high risk. Developed countries offer better access to the internet and higher wages, which translates to more smartphones and heavy usage of online services.

How do fraudsters find their victims? Emails and website banners are a cybercriminal’s bread and butter. Very often, fraudsters will copy legitimate commercial practices.

They rely on advertising engines like Facebook and Google to push their banners on users. Although these companies have strong safeguards in place, some banners still slip through the net.

Alternatively, some scammers study their future victims and analyse their online behavior — which can be easily done if the victim is browsing the web unprotected. That’s why it’s important to check that the websites you’re looking at have HTTPS in their address.

Additionally, users should protect themselves with a VPN connection. It prevents eavesdropping and would make it harder for scammers to intercept their payment.

However, when indulging in a shopping spree, Black Friday shoppers need to keep their wits about them for red flags.

Offers that look too good to be true or links received from banks or insurance companies – these are perfect examples of a con-artist’s methods.

The opportunistic cybercriminal relies on social-engineering to trick you into giving away your own account details.

Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN, listed the 5 major scenarios scammers will be exploiting in 2020:

• Fake invoices. Paying an invoice that looks exactly like a utility one can easily happen when people make more transactions than usual. These types of scam are called Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud. Even once the penny’s dropped and the victim has caught on to the crime, the payment can’t be reversed.
• Bank notifications. Fraudsters mimic emails sent by banks, claiming that recent purchases the victim has made couldn’t be processed. After clicking a dodgy link inside that email, the unfortunate victim is duped once again. The hacker would have recreated a fake bank website to look exactly like the genuine article, created specifically to fool people into giving away their own bank credentials.
• “Your order has been cancelled”. Similar to the above example, these scams typically start with a link that leads to a suspicious website. That link is accompanied by an email that claims one of your recent online orders has run out of stock, and urges the recipient to claim their refund. Once again, the victim is pushed to enter their bank account details, unfortunately leading to cybercriminals clearing them out completely of all their cash.
• Lookalike pages. Amazo?.com, eday.com, googIe.comv — most users do not spot the discrepancies in the address bar as long as the website design looks legitimate. They process the payment for the items in their shopping cart and end up robbed.
• Renew your membership for the purchases you’ve made. Once you’ve finished with your purchases, scammers will send you an email claiming that your Amazon Prime subscription is due and the discount cannot be applied. If you want your items to get delivered, you obviously have to renew the subscription. Which, of course, ultimately leads to stolen credentials.

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NordVPN is the world’s most advanced VPN service provider used by over 14 million internet users worldwide. NordVPN provides double VPN encryption, malware blocking, and Onion Over VPN. The product is very user-friendly, offers one of the best prices on the market, has over 5,000 servers in 60 countries worldwide, and is P2P-friendly. One of the key features of NordVPN is the zero-log policy. For more information: nordvpn.com.

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