Protecting Information And Data During The Holiday Shopping Season

Featured article by Gary S. Miliefsky, co-founder and CEO of SnoopWall Inc.

At a time of year when we’re determined to bring glad tidings to all and we’d like to proclaim that it really is “a wonderful life,” we also have to acknowledge that there are a few bad Santas lurking among the nice elves out there.

These holiday hackers and cyber-thieves are intent on their own version of merriment – and if they manage to penetrate your cyber defenses the result could be a lot worse than the traditional coal in the stocking.

Fortunately, there are a few precautionary steps you can take to foil their plans and keep your holiday festivities on track.

– Watch out for fake internet shopping sites. When you head out into the real world of shopping malls and retail giants, you aren’t likely to accidentally wander into a fake store. But on the internet, it can happen. Just recently, Apple removed hundreds of fake shopping site apps from their iTunes store because those apps led folks to counterfeit shopping sites. It’s a serious concern. To avoid these fake sites, you should only download a shopping app for your phone by following the link from the merchant’s official website. For example, go to Walmart.com and click on the link to download the app.

– Cleanup your Smartphone immediately. If you’re like many people, you may have installed dozens of apps on your phone but use just a handful daily. Delete the ones you don’t routinely use. Then look at the ones you’re keeping. What permissions do they use on your mobile device? What’s their privacy policy? Is the app collecting a lot of information on you using your contacts, reading your SMS, geo-locating, using your Wi-Fi, connecting to servers in other countries, like we’ve seen with Emoji keyboards, flashlight apps, bible apps, QR readers and others? If so, you might want to delete them and replace them with more trustworthy apps that use fewer permissions and come from app vendors you can actually talk with, in country, with a real website and a real support team.

– Shop online with credit cards. Never use a debit card for your online shopping. Credit cards are the much better option. If some sort of fraud takes place, the credit card company will take care of things for you and you won’t be out any money. With a debit card, the thieves will have taken money right out of your bank account. You might be able to get your hard-earned cash back, but you’ll have your work cut out for you. The bank may ask you to fill out an affidavit. There also could be a delay before your account is credited with the missing cash.

– Change your passwords. It’s tempting to find a good password and stick with it, but that’s not the best strategy for keeping yourself secure. Change all your passwords now and do it as frequently as you can tolerate. If you don’t want to change passwords that often, then at least include as part of the password any unique characters you can think of, such as a dollar sign or an exclamation mark. You can also replace the letter “O” with the number zero. This goes a long way in preventing brute-force attacks against your password.

– Turn off wireless and geo-location services. Protect your smartphones and tablets by turning off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and GPS, except when you need them. That way, if you are at a local coffee shop or in a shopping mall, no one can spy on you using nearby (proximity) hacking attacks and they can’t track where you were and where you are going on your GPS.

The holidays should be a time of joy, not distress. Implement these security measures and you can let the hackers be the ones worrying about coal in the stocking.

Finally, don’t forget when shipping packages to beware of porch pirates. Get permission to ship the packages to work where they will be safe from thieves.  Porch pirates look for packages when folks aren’t home and nab the goods when no one is looking.  It’s your hard-earned money; let’s make sure the cyber Grinch and porch pirates don’t steal your identity or holiday gifts this season.

Gary S. Miliefsky is the co-founder and CEO of SnoopWall Inc. (www.snoopwall.com), a cutting edge counter-intelligence technology company offering free consumer-based software to secure personal data on cell-phones and tablets, while generating revenues helping banks and government agencies secure their networks through patented breach prevention NetSHIELD appliances. He has been active in the INFOSEC arena, as the Executive Producer of Cyber Defense Magazine and contributor to Hakin9 Magazine.