Welcome to day one of our Christmas CyberSecurity Tips – today we focus on Phishing and Adware:
Phishing
It’s the season of goodwill but that’s not the case when it comes to CyberCriminals, because they don’t wish you good health, good fortune, or good wealth – all they want is your money and resources! Boo-Hiss…
Phishing attacks usually occur via email and see users receive a fake, but often very authentic-looking email from a bank or organization they know and use, which attempts to lure them to enter personal details on a similarly authentic-looking website.
We have blogged previous about phishing in several of our previous posts, helping you know what to look out for in order to avoid becoming a victim.
Christmas CyberSecurity Tip #1: Be mindful of emails – check links carefully. Be wary of shortened URLs. Don’t click without thinking: If this legitimate, and have I checked this out very carefully.
Adware
You may have noticed that after you search for an item online, it starts to pop up on other websites that you visit.
This is known as adware, and is customized to you as a user and may be monitored by spyware software.
While you may think these adverts are there to remind you to complete your Christmas shopping, the innocence of the pop-up is sometimes questionable.
Many legitimate sites have been fooled to display infected ads on their sites. Spotify in October, and Yahoo!, Fox and Google have been tricked to display malicious ads which deliver malware.
Christmas CyberSecurity Tip #2: Although many websites use ad-revenue, you can keep yourself a little safer with an ad-blocker. Use a paid antivirus that includes web-filtering, as they update quickly to protect their users when malicious websites are found!