On the eve of “Black Friday” phishers became noticeably more active

On the eve of “Black Friday” on the Internet, there has traditionally been an increase in the activity of phishers and other scammers, and 2019 is not an exception.

Over the past week, Kaspersky Lab’s security solutions recorded almost twice as many fake resources with the theme of the start of Christmas sales as a week earlier.

Attackers rush to take advantage of the pre-holiday hype – this is also evidenced by the increase in phishing attacks targeted by online stores.

The start of sales is a real expanse for online scammers. After all, it was at this time that a large number of people began to buy gifts for themselves and their loved ones in online stores, they were in a hurry and in this rush, they are often losing their vigilance. At the same time, it is worth saying that we expect an increase in the number of phishing attacks not only within the framework of Black Friday, but also amid subsequent New Year’s sales. As the experience of previous years shows, the percentage of phishing attacks, in particular in the financial sector, is approximately 12% higher than all other attacks in the fourth quarter than the same indicator at other times of the year“, – comments Tatyana Sidorina, senior content analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

The share of phishing in the field of electronic commerce, according to experts, has increased from 5 to 9% over the week. Two weeks ago, approximately every 20th phishing attack was directed to the e-commerce section, next, last week phishers tried to attack online stores on average in every 11 cases.

To avoid troubles during the holidays, and not only, may help following basic rules of safe shopping on the Web:

Payment for purchases online should be made using a separate card, with a small amount on the account and a limit on withdrawals;
Do not recklessly click on dubious links in letters, Internet-shop messages or in social networks, as well as on advertising banners on suspicious sites;
Before entering data for payment, be sure to check the site address in the browser bar;
Avoid buying in the stores registered on free hosting;
If you like the selected product, but there are doubts about the seller’s good will, you should first collect information about the site – a completely fresh domain and slurred data from the owner will prove that doubts are grounded;
Do not forget to use protective tools.