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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are Your Pockets Going to Get Picked This Holiday Season? Cybercrime statistics will grow in the next 60 days as thieves spend their time looking for your information floating around the Internet. It's a science that a lot of us can't understand and we often spend our time wondering, "How in world did they think of that". Well it's mainly due to our own lack of knowledge of what to protect and, in part, being lazy and forgetting the basics of security and ignoring that potential unsolicited email may contain harmful methods geared towards collecting your information. Each one of us at some point in time has received an email that made the curiosity come out of us. And the links they often contained really makes us want to click it, when in reality the email has some type of embedded code that may release a virus or worm on to our system. A wave of more sophisticated e-mail phishing scammers have infiltrated the Web this year hoping to cash in on the gift-buying crunch. (Phishers are the cyber-crooks who send e-mails asking for personal information or directing people to hoax Web sites.) . Experts expect another whopping increase in online holiday shopping this year. Internet sales are likely to jump to $18 billion - a 25 percent increase over last year, according to Forrester Research, a market research firm. Here are some tips to help keep you safe while shopping on the Internet: 1) Know whom you're dealing
with:
Do
a little searching and researching on the company and its objective
to sell something to you. Items offered
for sale well below the normal price, should alert
you that something isn't right.
2) Get all the
details in writing.
Get
the name and address of the seller; how much the product or service
costs; what is included for that price; whether there are shipping charges; the delivery time, if any; the seller's privacy policy; and most importantly - their cancellation and return policy. 3) Look for signs
that online purchases are secure.
At
the point that you are providing your payment information, the beginning
of
the Web site address should change from http to shttp or https, indicating that the information is being encrypted-turned into code that can only be read by the seller. Your browser may also signal that the information is secure with a symbol, such as a broken key that becomes whole or a padlock that closes. And make sure you log out properly. That does not include clicking the 'X' in the upper right corner or 'File/exit' in your browser. 4) Never enter
your personal information in a pop-up screen.
When
you visit a company's Web site, an unauthorized pop-up screen created
by an identity thief could appear, with blanks for you to provide your personal information. 5) Keep documentation
of your order.
When
you've completed the online order process, there may be a final
confirmation page and/or you might receive confirmation by email. Print that information and keep it handy in case you need it later. Sometimes the email will fail to get to your 'Inbox', but printing your finalized order, will give authorities something to work from. Although
we may beef up our security from the day after Thanksgiving to the
day after Christmas, you really should extend that another 30 days out starting from December 26 since most retailers will allow you return items back to the credit card used for up to 60 days with the confirmation number and remember thieves are still lurking around waiting for that information to be passed back to the consumer. --------------------------------------------------
What to do if you become a victim: -------------------------------------------------- Turn off your computer and leave it off. ------------------------------------------------------ If you suspect that you have been a victim of a Cybercrime incident, the first steps that needs to be done is to contact your credit card companies and keep an eye on your credit and bank accounts. After doing that, it's very important to turn off your computer and leave it off until you can make contact with a Computer Forensics' or Cybercrime specialist. If you're unaware of whom to contact, find a Private Investigator or an Attorney that can recommend one. The Computer Forensics'
or Cybercrime specialist will be able to make an exact
copy (image) of your internal hard drive using devices such as an ImageMASSter
Solo III Forensic Data Acquisition Tool. This will preserve the data
from getting overwritten or changed and will later provide you with the details
of the information outlining how your system was compromised and possibly what was taken.
This stage is crucial to successfully prosecuting the person that did this
to you and
allows the Computer Forensics' or Cybercrime specialist to actively
pursue for
you the person responsible by following up with local law enforcement.
--------------------------------------------
Happy and Safe Cyber surfing! -------------------------------------------- Jim Persinger, LPI
Digital Forensics / Cybercrime Specialist PM Investigations, Inc. Member: IPAG, GAPPI, HTCIA www.pminvestigations.com jim@pminvestigations.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Persinger will be appearing on The Fox News Cable Channel Friday, December 9th at 1:00 P.M. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be removed from our newsletter e-mail list please reply with an email subject unsubscribe. |
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