As Christmas season comes around people will be preparing to do quite a bit of shopping in order to prepare for the holidays. Since we are living in a modern day and age, the fact of the matter is that most people are going to be doing this shopping online. Now, if you are planning to shop online from a trusted source such as Amazon then you don’t have all that much to worry about, but if you are going for many of the other retailers out there we have some bad news for you.
Recent research from Venafi has indicated that there are four times more fake retailers out there than real ones. This means that eighty percent of the retailers that you might try to shop from are going to be fake, thereby putting your data security at risk.
Essentially fake retailers are phishing you by getting your card information, details that they can use to get a lot of money from your account, even without your permission. It’s very important that you try to protect yourself from these fake retailers since once your card information has been compromised it will actually be quite difficult for you to try and protect yourself and you will probably need to report it to the authorities which will open a whole new can of worms for you.
Photo: Pattanaphong Khuankaew / EyeEm via Getty Images
Read next: Which Companies Turned A Profit the Quickest - And Which Have Yet To?
Recent research from Venafi has indicated that there are four times more fake retailers out there than real ones. This means that eighty percent of the retailers that you might try to shop from are going to be fake, thereby putting your data security at risk.
"Cyberattackers use a host of methods to con customers into divulging their private information. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by creating “lookalike domains” that share some of the same characters in their URLs as legitimate domains. And while not all lookalike domains are suspicious, many are.", explained report.This is a big deal because of the fact that you are going to be putting in your card details for these retailers to use in order to charge you for what you are trying to buy. Now if you go for a retailer that is legitimate then you will only be charged for what you are buying and you will end up receiving it in an appropriate amount of time, but the thing about this is that if you go to someone that isn’t legit this could lead to a lot of problems for you.
Essentially fake retailers are phishing you by getting your card information, details that they can use to get a lot of money from your account, even without your permission. It’s very important that you try to protect yourself from these fake retailers since once your card information has been compromised it will actually be quite difficult for you to try and protect yourself and you will probably need to report it to the authorities which will open a whole new can of worms for you.
Photo: Pattanaphong Khuankaew / EyeEm via Getty Images
Read next: Which Companies Turned A Profit the Quickest - And Which Have Yet To?
