With the holidays rapidly approaching, it can also be the most wonderful time of the year for fraudsters looking to take advantage of people when they least expect it.
Every year there are wide variety of scams criminal minds attempt, Greg Young, vice president of cybersecurity at Trend Micro, told Global News, that this year, one appears to be fake shipping notification scams.
“Bad guys are sending out notifications, either by email or by text or SMS that you’ve received or missed a delivery from Amazon or DHL or others, and there’s a link there to click on,” he explained.
“Usually these are quite well written (and) the idea is to just click on (it) and you know you’re going to get malware. And you know that that’s just the start of ransomware or something else.”
Because people are concerned about getting gifts for loved ones in time for the holidays, Young said the scammers are preying on people’s anxieties to wreak havoc.
There are other scams, he said, such as pretending there are issues with your COVID passport or that a relative might be ill.
“All of these have one common element. They are going to play into some kind of stressful event for you, or something you feel aggrieved about, or you have to react to quickly,” the cybersecurity expert explained.
“You’ve been exposed to COVID. Your COVID passport is invalid. There are just so many: your insurance is revoked, duct cleaning, any possible thing that could stress you out.”
But, he said, there are steps to take to cut the risk of being taken advantage of.
“Generally, you have to assume any link you’re being given has to be hostile, unfortunately,” he explained.
“The Canadian (internet) carriers and the ISPs do a pretty good job at filtering out most things, but it’s always that back and forth.”
Young said that before clicking on any link, there are some easy questions to ask:
“Does this make sense? Does this even look valid?”
A third way to protect yourself is to contact the delivery service mentioned in the email or text. Look for official contact info for a company or organization and reach out before clicking on a link, Young said.
“There’s also a really great service out there that’s available online to check your URLs before you click on it,” he offered before explaining how warning not to click on the link.
“You’ve got to copy and paste the link into one of these (URL checking services) that gives you a good sort of first check, if it’s legitimate or not.”
Young also suggests getting some software to protect your devices and to also keep a regularly updated backup of your software.
“Keep yourself patched, keep yourself protected. Click on those Microsoft updates or Apple updates to update your operating systems, that will stop a lot of these attacks,” he said.