Holiday Internet Scams To Watch Out For

With the holiday season comes a whole slew of holiday related scams.  Unfortunately many people see this time of year as a great vehicle to take advantage of people’s good will.  Identity thieves will use every tactic available to them to try and play upon your holiday cheer.  And if you’re not careful, those tactics will work, and you’ll become a victim.  In most cases just because you wanted to do something nice.  So what should you look out for?

Well, the same signs you always do, just with a more festive touch.  If you find yourself receiving a lot of emails from recognized “charities” asking for seasonal donations, it’s best not to respond.  In most cases these are scammers attempting to pose as the charities so that you’ll give them information they can use against you.  If you want to donate to a charity online, your best bet is to type the web address into your browser’s address bar yourself.

Holiday ecards are another haven for danger when it comes to identity theft.  While you’re just trying to be seasonal, and environmentally friendly, many identity thieves hide worms and spyware in these.  Most of the time they’ll try to pose as free Hallmark ecard for example, get you to download the file, and then spyware is installed on your computer that could allow the thief to gain access to the information stored on your computer.  So if you want to send ecards, make sure you only download files from an absolutely trusted website.  If it’s going to be Hallmark, get it from the Hallmark website.

Watch out for fake delivery invoices in your email.  Identity thieves know many people order gifts online, and that usually means emailed delivery and shipment confirmations.  By posing as a shipping company, like UPS, they send you an email to notify you of a possible problem with your package.  The situation always requires a credit card number to resolve.  Never give out any information or reply to these emails.

Remember, these are only a few of the scams that identity thieves will employ.  Use common sense always, and make sure that you never give out personal information unless you know 100% that it’s a secure source.