Christmas is a time of year full of joy, but it is also a time of year when we tend to receive many emails from deceptive companies that want to capture our attention. To avoid scams and cybercrime, it is important to know how to defend ourselves from these communications.
This can happen to us, for example, when we shop online safely . Crimes such as phishing, spoofing and smishing allow certain people to impersonate us or another company in order to obtain our banking or personal data when we least expect it.
In this sense, it is essential to know the measures that will help us protect ourselves from the moment we turn on the computer screen until we finish our operations. Grab a pen and paper because, if you are about to buy Christmas presents , this article will interest you.
Tips to avoid scams and cybercrime at Christmas
The 2019 Study on Cybercrime in Spain , published by the facebook data Ministry of the Interior, shows that during that year there were 35.8% more cybercrimes than in 2018, and twice as many as in 2017. The coronavirus crisis has caused these figures to skyrocket and more and more scams are being committed on browsers . These tips will help you protect yourself and your family while browsing the Internet:
Protect yourself against phishing, spoofing and smishing. Phishing is a cybercrime in which a criminal impersonates a company to gain the victim's trust and fraudulently obtain their data. Smishing is similar, but it happens via SMS on a mobile phone, and spoofing installs malware or other viruses on the user's computer to render it unusable.
Pay attention to messages from NGOs. Whenever you receive an email from an NGO, check that it links to an official website through which you can safely make your donation. On several occasions, messages from Greenpeace or Doctors Without Borders have appeared in which not even the date of issue was changed.
Avoid well-known scams and hoaxes such as the Correos scam. In 2019, a hoax spread in which a cybercriminal posing as Correos sent an SMS to victims warning them that they had to pay a postage charge. Always find out the sources of the information so that you don't get tricked.
Don't download Christmas apps from strange platforms. At Christmas, it's common to download fun apps where you can create your own videos with Santa Claus or even apply filters that turn you into a snow elf. Before doing so, research the developer and their reviews, checking that it's on an official store.