Blake Dowling
Speaking to WCTV in Tallahassee about holiday shopping and cyber security last week, I wanted to share some of those talking points.
As we wrap up Christmas shopping online and in-person, please keep cyber security top of mind.
Hopefully, you have the basics down. These include: Staying off public Wi-Fi, not clicking texts offering “free” items (iPads, etc.), deleting fake shipping emails that ask you to “verify” your information as they are phishing for your money, disregarding fake phone calls from “Walmart, IRS, Dell, etc.” about your free gift card, tax return or other item.
Plus, as our Attorney General advises, be very careful with your holiday giving as there are lots of fake charities out there. You can read up on that here:
Be very weary of fraudulent emails this time of year if the above message was not clear. Malware can come in links, fake PDFs, Excel Grids, Docu-signs, so look at the from address very carefully as well as the time, content and the “ask.”
You do not want to end up like the Orlando man who had his phone number re-routed, passwords harvested and bank account drained — all because of what appears to be from opening a PDF from an unknown party.
Luckily, this man took his story to News 6, and they helped him get his funds returned from the bank.
Cyber Claus (Online Santa Claus) was nice to this gentleman for sure.
That guy almost had a Twisted Christmas. Cue the music please 80’s rocker Dee Snider.
You should also have a complex password with your online merchant accounts; consider using a credit card vs a debit card as penned transactions on a debit card are not refundable in most cases. Regardless of the situation. As Staci and I discussed on air for WCTV, you would not give your credit card number to a stranger on the street so use the same caution online. Our conversion is detailed here.
Also, when shopping online takes time to create an account versus going to the guest option.
The additional layer of credentials may just save you from an early visit from a hacker or Cyber Claus. Another online destination hackers are using to deceive you is sponsored links. When you search for an item online the first few items that pop up from a search engine are “sponsored”. These will be at the top of the page and the rest of your search results are below them. The ones at the top need to be reviewed carefully or avoided.
We had a team member looking up the QuickBooks support number the other day for example. He Googled it, the first Google link was an illegitimate sponsored link that was 100% not QuickBooks but they wanted you to download their malware thinking it was QuickBooks.
If you downloaded their software, they would then take over your computer. The clever folks out there came up with a name for this, combining advertising and malware.
Welcome to “Malvertising,” it’s a thing and be very careful when reviewing sponsored links.
For the record, Google and other search engines fight hard to stop this sort of thing and most ads are what they look like, normal ads. But it only takes one bad ad to ruin your day. Check out the story of a person who thought they were clicking on a link for livestream software, OBS. They thought they downloaded the streaming software within a sponsored link but what they did was invite a hacker into their world. This led to a breached Twitter account, lost funds and a massive headache.
You can read the entire sad tale here.
Consider an ad-blocker if you want to avoid the whole situation.
When I Googled “best ad blocker,” VPNwelt came up first in a sponsored ad.
So, we are just going to scroll past that one and recommend Total AdBlock.
Wow, what a vicious circle that would be to get tricked into downloading malware from an ad for an ad blocker trying to stop malware. Sometimes I wonder why I choose to fight hacking as part of my life’s work as it can be brutal some days, but someone has to fight the hackers, might as well be us.
Buy the ticket, fight the breach — as Hacker S. Thompson once said.
Happy Holidays!
These tips are not just for the holidays, they are best practices for everyday cyber protection. How about we end with a song? I asked the artificial intelligence tool CHATGPT to help me put together this festive Christmas number to the tune of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
We came up with this …
“He’s hacking his list, he’s breaching it twice, he’s got your credit cards ready to splice, you better not phish I’m telling you why, cause Cyber Claus is coming to town, that’s right, Cyber Claus is coming to town.”
See ya next year, thanks for reading, Merry Christmas, and report any cybercrime to your local police office, Ashley Moody’s office, or FDLE.
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Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and wishes you a Happy New Year. Digital Christmas cards and kind words can be sent to [email protected].
