Identity Theft News

Worst day to online shop is?today

Monday, December 1, 2008

Thanks to a weakening economy and the public's new-found desire to save money this holiday season, cyber criminals are in full force with malicious content aimed at consumers.

Today is Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, which means more people will be online using their credit cards.

Robert Williams, CEO of a customer-service software company for online merchants, told USA Today online consumers are expected to spend $821 million today, an increase of 12 percent from the same day in 2007.

In preparation for this, cyber criminals have created sophisticated phishing scams and malicious programs, USA Today reports. Some have even injected the security-breaching code into online advertisements to entice easily-distracted consumers.

It's being predicted phishing attacks will increase this year, due to the weak economy. Aside from consumers, small businesses and credit unions are also being targeted because of the organizations' lack of strong antivirus software and firewalls.

SMBs should be particularly on guard. It appears spammers have found a new home, despite the shutdown of hosting company McColo last month, eweek.com reports.

In 2006, it was found that the smaller a company was, the more likely it would be vulnerable to email threats.