With the economy in the gutter and South Africans counting every penny, there is a palpable anticipation for Black Friday this year. Estimates project that billions will flow through the arteries of the local economy during the shopping event this year. Unfortunately, with so much money floating around, cybercriminals are preparing to pounce.

With that in mind, it’s important to take precautions when shopping online. These precautions should form the base of all your online activities but especially so when you’re about to key your credit card details into a website.

While there is no guarantee that cybercriminals won’t compromise you, there are some things you can do to prevent being compromised.

Get a cybersecurity suite

Before you even start visiting websites with deals, buy yourself some good cybersecurity software. This can be from Norton, ESET, Trend Micro, Kaspersky or any one of the several reputable security solutions on the market. Microsoft’s Windows Security is good enough but we’ve found that a premium third-party solution has several benefits including the ability to quickly identify potential threats and deal with them.

We recommend starting your search for a solution here.

Check and recheck websites

Once you have your security solution in place it’s time to shop. Deals on Black Friday are often shared widely on social media but be careful which links you follow. Cybercriminals can often mimic legitimate websites in order to lure users into a false sense of security. For instance, scammers could set up a URL that looks legitimate but is really just a phishing website.

Our advice is to head directly to any websites you see deals on rather than clicking links on social media, emails or web searches. By heading directly to the website you can be assured that you are at the right place and if you can’t find the deal, you may have just avoided a phishing scam.

Language is important

Keep an eye out for spelling and grammatical errors on a website. While these could just be simple errors, they can also be a sign that the website isn’t legitimate. But more than that, be cognisant of the language being used by the website. Cybercriminals tend to play on the emotions of targets.

Words like “exclusive” or urgency to get a deal should be a red flag even on legitimate websites. Don’t be impulsive and you’ll probably save yourself some money and you may even avoid a scam.

YOU’RE A WINNER!

Aside from luring targets in with discounts, cybercriminals could simply try to claim that you have won something and all you need to do to claim it is click a link. Here there is a risk of not only handing your credentials over to cybercriminals willingly, you could also be tricked into downloading malware.

The unfortunate fact of life is that if you don’t enter a competition you really have no chance of winning so be sure to make sure that if you receive a message saying that you’ve won a competition, that you actually entered it.

Check your account regularly

With threats lurking everywhere, it’s important to keep track of your accounts. Check that you recognise ever transaction on your account and flag anything that looks suspicious with your bank as soon as possible. If you are using a joint account, be sure to tell the account owner when you are making a purchase to avoid needless panic.

On the same token, enable notifications on your banking profile and other payment platforms so that you are aware when payments are made.

No MFA is a mistake

Before the sales start we highly recommend you set up multi-factor authentication for your online profiles, especially for your banking profile and email. In the event that your details are compromised, MFA can help to slow cybercriminals down and potentially give you time to change your credentials before tragedy strikes.

Your delivery is delayed

Around this time of year we notice a sharp uptick in the amount of spam emails we receive claiming to be from DHL. These emails are of course a scam designed to trick shoppers into unknowingly compromising themselves. To avoid falling prey to this scam we highly recommend heading directly to the courier’s website – or the website you ordered from – and keying in your tracking number. If that doesn’t help, call the company handling the delivery directly and speak to somebody who can assist.

For South Africans especially, we recommend take additional precautions when receiving goods you’ve ordered as criminals can follow couriers before robbing them or worse.

Update your passwords while you’re at it

With South Africans using trivial passwords like 123456, we highly recommend you take some time this week to update your passwords this week. This goes for the shopping apps you use as well as your banking.

If you are tempted to use a new shopping platform, be sure to secure it with a unique, complex password. A password manager may also be a good thing to add to your list of Black Friday deals to shop for.

Kaspersky predicts that there will be a 25 percent increase in retail-focussed cybercrime. This month the cybersecurity firm has already detected 198 000 Black Friday themed spam messages. As scams often hide amongst spam this is an increase worth worrying about.

Thankfully cybersecurity is a major concern for all reputable online stores and so they will be doing most of the work to insure that your shopping experience is as safe as possible. That doesn’t mean you can complacent though.

Keep your wits about you and remember the golden rule – If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

[Image – Megan Rexazin Conde from Pixabay]