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Five Types of Shoppers You'll Find This Holiday Season (and the Cyberscams They Must Watch Out For)NEW DELHI, India, Dec. 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- With the holidays around the corner, we're smack in the middle of every shopper's favourite season. Big sales days like Singles' Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and 12.12 all offer many great opportunities for shoppers to get their fill of good deals. Akamai Technologies, Inc., the cloud company that powers and protects life online, shares five common shopper profiles observed during the year-end shopping period and the cyberscams they should watch out for to help consumers and businesses identify potential blind spots, and learn how to protect themselves this holiday season. "The number of cyber-attacks continues to rise and mutate all the time. In 2022, the most alarming has been the sharp increase in malicious bot attacks, where we recorded a three-fold increase of such attacks. What this means for the retail industry is the likelihood of increased credential stuffing, where attackers use lists of compromised user credentials to breach into a system and data scraping attacks, the process of importing information from a website into a spreadsheet or local file saved on your computer." said Dean Houari, Director of Security Technology and Strategy, APJ, Akamai. "It is no surprise that attackers are looking to take advantage of the flurry of peak retail activity online during the extended shopping festival season since there's much to gain financially, especially in Asia that accounts for approximately 60 percent of global ecommerce sales. It's essential that both shoppers and retailers work together to learn how to watch out for scams and protect themselves," he continued. FIVE TYPES OF YEAR-END SHOPPERS 1. THE PLANNER Most likely to fall for: Credential Stuffing Tips to protect against credential stuffing:
2. THE LAST-MINUTE SCRAMBLER Most likely to fall for: Phishing With the rise of online marketplaces, his is becoming more common. Earlier this year, Singapore's most popular peer-to-peer sales platform was affected when attackers posing as legitimate buyers directed victims to a fake bank website where they would be asked to give their banking details to receive payment. This resulted in at least 72 people losing over $109,000. Tips to protect against phishing
3. The Bargain Hunter Most likely to fall for: Social Engineering Attacks Attackers prey on buyer's eagerness for a good deal by sending them fake offers that request for their personal data on a page, even impersonating legitimate tools like Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager to compromise code and steal valuable information, impacting shopping sites. Tips to protect against social engineering attacks
4. The Impulse Buyer Most likely to fall for: Brand Impersonation Attacks Tips to protect against brand impersonation
5. The Researcher Most likely to fall for: Extension Malware Attacks Most recently, attackers have been using information-stealing malware like FB Stealer, which mimics the harmless and standard-looking Chrome extension Google Translate, to prey on users. Financially motivated, attackers after effectively locking a user out of their Facebook account, abuse access to ask the victim's friends for money. Tips to protect against extension malware attacks
Retailers must do their part too! Attacks on popular retail behemoths in the last few years have revealed important lessons for merchants. Prevention is better than cure. Taking proactive steps to monitor potential threats and being ready to block unauthorised access and keep shoppers safe throughout their retail experience is essential. "As web traffic increases, attackers similarly increase their attacks. Case in point, malicious bot attacks tripled during Single's Day last year. These attacks could, immediately or in future, drain customer accounts, damage site functionality, and hold encrypted data ransom — all at enormous costs to businesses," explained Houari. "To ensure loyalty long term, retailers must make every effort to keep shopper data safe. This could include deploying a bot solution to stop credential stuffing attempts early and using password managers and multi factor authentication to secure users," he concluded. About Akamai Contact: [email protected] Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/384815/akamai_logo__002_.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/five-types-of-shoppers-youll-find-this-holiday-season-and-the-cyberscams-they-must-watch-out-for-301707978.html |