The Black Friday Scam

A Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers! Don’t overdo the turkey…mind you and remember that Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, although the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season is not actually an official holiday, so get back to work if your boss hasn’t given you the day off!

Countless stores across the States will be opening their doors very early, typically 5 am or even earlier (Is this still true in times of 24/7 shopping) to offer their so-called doorbuster deals. These kind of sales are like all that spam we get offering cheap luxury watches as far as I’m concerned, a chance to buy tat you don’t want at knockdown prices (In the UK we reserve it for Boxing Day, December 26).

Whatever, you think of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, in the post-Thanksgiving funk of turkey farts and hangovers, don’t take your eye off the security ball. It could be a great weekend for phishers of men and women, account-slicing spammers and socially engineered scammers hoping to trap the unwary e-shopper avoiding the doorbusting stores but still after a bargain.

But, if you’re on a mobile device at the mall, make sure you hide your connection behind a wifi hotspot shield and if you’re checking GMail there, at the very least, make sure you’re in little s mode.

Remember also, the old, old tradition of Cyber Monday, which dates back to…well…almost beyond living memory…well actually the 2005 holiday season when it was a phrase coined by shop.org Security experts are warning of a massive phishing trip this weekend. Others think this is nothing more than scaremongering. I say: shop safe, whether it’s scaremongering or not, just in case.