malware

01/08/2021 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

5 Smart Tips for Safe Online Shopping in 2021

Online shopping is fast becoming the new norm. Thanks to the freedom, convenience, and ease it offers, you're probably thinking of doing it yourself. However, one of the biggest concerns most online shoppers have is security. How secure are your financial details on shopping websites?

Here are a few tips that can help you stay safe in 2021.

1. Start with trusted sites

There are millions of online retail sites today. Most of them are legitimate, but some contain links to spam and malicious content. You, therefore, need to be extra careful when searching for a shopping website.

First, start with the popular and well-known sites like Amazon.com or Ebay.com. You're less likely to be scammed on these sites since you've probably used them before. You can also try your favorite retail stores if they're online, but ensure you know the right web addresses.

Be on the lookout for the popular domain misspelling scams, for instance, a hacker may use Amazon.net instead of Amazon.com. These tricks have been successful for years because they're not conspicuous at first glance.

2. Look for HTTPS URL and a padlock icon

Before sharing your credit or debit card information on an online shopping site, here are the two rules you should follow: Ensure the site’s URL starts with HTTPS, and confirm that a locked padlock icon appears slightly left of the URL bar. (Click here for a full list of privacy tips while shopping online)

The (S) in HTTPS stands for secure and shows that the shopping website has integrated a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. The locked padlock (sometimes green) indicates that your connection to the website is secure.

Avoid sharing any information on sites with just HTTP and without the padlock.

3. Don’t shop over public wi-fi

We’ve heard stories about public wi-fi hotspots and cybercriminals countless times. By now, you should know that while shopping using public Wi-Fi seems convenient, it leaves your data in the hands of hackers.

Personal information such as your credit card details, bank details, phone number, and your emails are but a few of the data a hacker can manipulate from the vulnerabilities of unsecure Wi-Fi.

So, instead of exposing yourself to that much risk, always use your data to complete your online shopping transactions. And if you really have to use Wi-Fi, a simple VPN download will go a long way to improving your security.

But still, if you can avoid insecure public Wi-Fi, do yourself a favor and do it.

4. Keep your software up-to-date

Updating your software is the #1 online security measure every security expert recommends. Whether you're shopping on your phone, laptop, or tablet, ensure that the operating system is up-to-date with the latest updates.

Updating your software fixes any vulnerabilities that cybercriminals may exploit to send malware into your system.

5. Avoid ‘too good to be true’ offers

In any e-commerce store, if any product pricing appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. Don't trust any seller offering such an offer. This is usually a trap by some sellers to collect your credit card information among other data, so they can sell it. In other cases, the product might be of very poor quality.

Conclusion

When shopping online, getting scammed isn’t just a far-fetched idea. It happens to millions of people every day. You should therefore be careful with how you go about the process if you want to avoid it. With the tips above, we’re confident that you’ll always be one step ahead of the criminals.

Photo by rupixen.com on Unsplash

01/29/2020 By Jason Bean 3 Comments

Can You See the Red Flags in This PayPal Account Phishing Attempt

PayPal Phishing Email Screenshot — Click Image to Enlarge

It still surprises me the number of people that get taken by these types of spam emails, normally leading to malware installs, identity theft or other annoyances of life in the digital age. For me I hardly ever click on links in an email if I'm not expecting the email from someone already in advance. Even then I take a few quick seconds to scan the email and look for anything that seems fishy to me. Or should that be "phishy"?

Can you spot all the issues with this email I recently received:

Misspelled the name of the company in the sender's name "Paypl service"
Spammy looking email address! - this isn't always a reliable tell-tell sign to watch out, but more often than not it should give you a heads up. In this case the account name (prior to the @ symbol) seems odd, and in this case the server the email is coming from is also pretty sketchy looking
Not always a red-flag (sadly) but there's numerous instances of letters being capitalized in the body of the message that shouldn't be if following standard grammatical rules
Although not an alert all by itself, anything I see a link that's formatted as a button, I know there's opportunity for the things to be hidden, in this case we look at where the link is going to go by hovering over the link with our mouse in the browser and our browser telling us where in the bottom-left-hand corner
Look at that link! //cat.jp.as.criteo.com/ now I'm going to stop right there because it's interesting to note that "Criteo" is a legitimate advertising platform, so these spammers appear to be either absolutely tracking their efforts of success or potentially spoofing this further to obscure their ploy. Taking a further look at the remaining part of the URL you'll see another website address being include after the "?r=" query string. That leads me to believe that link is being redirected even further to help cover their tracks

Here's another quick Public Service Announcement for you, don't just go clicking on links in emails even when they look like they're coming from legitimate sources.

In this case, if you did indeed have a PayPal account and you were worried about it. Go to their website directly by opening your browser and typing in the URL of the company directly and visiting the site that way. Login to your account and see if there are any warnings or alerts posted there. If the company has a chat feature for support, send them a chat and have them verify if there are or are not any issues with your account that need to be addressed.

09/05/2019 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

Great Marketing Strategy Nag Screen From Avast

When's the last time you were impressed and surprised by a company's marketing strategy towards you?

I'll admit it. If there's a free piece of software that works for me I will use it. And use it, and use it, and then some! I used Microsoft Defender and Windows Security Essentials for forever as my anti-virus and anti-malware services. And yes, they always worked well for me. I've never had a reason to not continue using them as I had been for years.

Well, with Windows 10 at some point I got the Avast free antivirus software installed and as before I've continued to use it because it seems to work fine for me, although I do miss my previous software installs.

Avast software includes them regularly nagging me about my PC running slow and they can improve it and blah-blah-blah. I usually click through the upgrade notifications and warnings and go along my merry way. I'm an above average computer user and can just take care of most of those things myself. It's amazing what regular maintenance activities and being aware of what's getting installed on my machines to begin with can make a difference.

Getting Surprised and Impressed by Avast

This evening though, as I was clicking through the screens to say "No Thanks" the screen featured below popped up.

In my opinion Insync.Media is a best in class marketing agency and this is a great piece of marketing strategy work. They've taken the usual motivations for "No" and clearly give you reasons to trust them and give them a try while reinforcing the low-risk and zero price commitment barriers.

As you've probably experienced, you'll sign-up for a trial of something and before you know it the trial is over and you just got your account cha-chinged for a charge you really weren't prepared to confirm in the budget that month.

Key Marketing Strategy Points

Here are the key points I believe in this marketing strategy that you will find at thewebshop.net.au:

I'm reminded of the issues my PC was experiencing that this software says it will fix. In my case that's 445 performance issues (a personalized total for me as a customer)
Reminder that I can take advantage of the 60-day trial completely FREE
If I like it, on 11/04/2019 I will be charged the 1 year subscription rate (I frequently put reminders in my calendar now a couple of days ahead of these kinds of dates to remind me to take care and cancel it if I don't want it)
Additionally, they're letting me know (because of my behavior in the previous point) they're going to alert me a week before the deadline to cancel so I don't get surprised and irritated at them for automatically renewing my subscription.
Additional reminders via text
Nice comforting green color

I Might Actually Upgrade to the Premium Version

I'm actually pretty close to giving it a try and just seeing how I like it, and most importantly, did it clean-up those 445 performance issues and actually speed up my computer for me? One thing they left off that I think would have been beneficial, and it probably would be included in that email 7 days before! They've got an option to save more if you subscribe for 3 years at a time. It works out to $1.69/mnth billed at just over $60 for the 3 years.

What's not said in this advertisement is that this probably saves Avast a ton of headaches as well, in case you think a marketing strategy is need for your business you may find it at searchup.co.uk marketing agency website.

When's the last time you put your customer's shoes on and thought about their experience with you and your company? Ask yourself how you'd like to be treated if the roles were reversed?. Their customer service reps are probably tired of fielding calls, emails and online social media complaints about getting auto-billed and renewed for services.

What would your sales and marketing processes look like then?