What should you be doing over the holiday period to keep yourself safe in cyber security? We outline a few simple tips to follow.

Shop smart with online purchases

• Avoid purchasing from sites you don’t know; can you really trust that they aren’t selling your data elsewhere?
• Avoid using links in emails to shopping sites advertising specials, instead navigate to main site yourself. These links could be redirects to dodgy versions which will harvest your passwords and other data.
• Always relevant but particularly during the spending season; monitor your bank card statements for any suspicious activity (They might be easier to miss with all the spending for holidays).

Shared Wi-Fi networks

When travelling avoid using public Wi-Fi unless necessary. Free Public Wi-Fi is a particular problem for travellers as attackers know they are likely to connect to anything that is available (as often there is no other option).

Downloading Unknown Apps

During the holidays you have plenty of free time, right? Well careful what apps you download and ensure you only download from official sites like Google Play Store and App Store. Avoid free hotel apps as these often just subscribe you to more spam emails or maybe worse.

Two Factor Authentication

Although this is a trend that should definitely be implemented all year round (it involves setting up your phone as a confirmation when logging into an online service) it’s particularly important if you are travelling on the holidays as you will be notified immediately by the two-factor app or any unexpected login. This allows you to quickly login to the account and change the password, if it’s been compromised.

Don’t post about holiday times or locations on social media

Attackers knowing where you are at any particular time is definitely not good thing, and although it might be very tempting to notify friends on where you are, this makes you an easy target for which the data can be used in many unexpected ways.

Phishing Email Scams

Again, this occurs all-year-round but during the holiday season crafty email phishers may be able to use your Out of Office reply message to their advantage. For instance, knowing when you’ll be out of the office until is valuable information that can be used in a phishing attack. For example – you’re not contactable so the attacker sends a ‘sense of urgency’ email asking a staff member to change payment details.

Spam emails make up approximately 45% of all emails every day, that’s 14.5 billion messages (spamlaws). This means it’s a large issue for almost all internet users, business and personal.
Below we will go over the best tips for picking out those pesky emails so you can best protect yourself and your business. The biggest key to defeating spam emails are education of users, you can have the best spam filter in the world but it’s not guaranteed to block all scam emails without blocking legitimate emails.

1. Don’t Trust The Display Name

Email addresses can be ‘spoofed’ and what I mean by that is they can be altered to make it appear like they have come from a legitimate source even though it has come from the scammer. The email address might even appear to be exactly the same!

For example, look at the below from address in a scam email we received;

The email appears at first to be a legitimate email from a Xero email address but they have actually spoofed Xero’s domain and the actual email is from stephen@aetherworkbooks.com.

2. Hover Over Links Within The Email

A key part of scammers emails are malicious links within emails. Often, they will make it appear like a legitimate link, maybe it has the correct logo or the wording is exactly the same as NAB’s for instance but the link will very often redirect to site where the criminals can capture your data. Sometimes there is only very small differences in the URL address of the fake links compared to the real link.

 Have a look at the below example taken from the same scam email as shown above;

When I hovered over the INV-7309009 link it shows clearly that it doesn’t go to a Xero address but this unknown aetherworkbooks address. A standard rule to follow is if you don’t recognise the link’s address don’t click it.

3. Email Is Not Personalised

The salutation of the email can often be a giveaway, scam emails a majority of the time will not address the recipient personally (as the are sent in bulk by nature) and will say something similar to “Dear Client” or “Dear Valued Customer”.

4. Grammar Mistakes

Email scammers are getting better at these mistakes but its an easy way for us to pick out a good chunk of illegitimate emails. Often these scammers don’t have a native English language so their vetting process of emails isn’t great. Remember these scam emails can come from organised groups too, so they can also be quite close to the real thing.

5. Sense Of Urgency

Scammer like to use a fear tactics where they make you think you are in immediate danger, for example a particular software has expired or your Microsoft account has been hacked. This aims to make you act irrationally without thinking through the situation and follow the scammer’s requests to resolve the issue quickly.

6. Time The Email Was Sent

Ever notice how you receive a lot of junk mail at night? Well this is a key sign the email isn’t legitimate, how many contacts do you know that would email you at 4am in the morning? 2 out of the 3 biggest country spam sources are the United States and Russia (Spamhaus), obviously being in completely different time zones to Australia.

7. Asking For Personal Information

This might seem like an obvious point but many people continue to get tricked into giving their details to strangers claiming to ‘help’. Remember legitimate companies will never ask for your personal data over email and even if it looks like a trusted organisation like the NAB or Government you should never give personal information out. If the scammer doesn’t use your personal details you give them, they will often sell your details on the black market for other illegitimate organisations to pickup and abuse.

8. The Sender Doesn’t Know The Addressee

One of the key things to think about with any suspicious email whether it be yourself or someone you know; is whether the recipient is expecting and email from this person and/ or do they know the sender’s address? So many scam emails can be eliminated by simply asking yourself that question. Although this doesn’t cover all bases and as mentioned above email addresses can be spoofed to make it look like an address you know, it still gives you a good starting point and gets you in the frame of mind to question these scam emails.

All of these tips can be followed quite easily by anyone, and honestly the biggest hurdle to continually beating scammers is awareness and education which I hope this article has provided!