Watch our latest Naked Security Live video for practical tips for staying safe online – not just on Black Friday and Cyber Monday…
…but on Tempting Tuesday, Wild Wednesday, Too-Good-To-Be-True Thursday, plus all the other days that cybercrooks have you in their sights (which is every day of the year).
Here are our tips in summary form:
- If is sounds too good to be true, it IS too good to be true. Don’t take risks just because it’s the shopping season.
- Use a password manager. A password manager will make sure you pick a different password for every site, can remember 18-character jumbled up passwords just as easily as you can remember your cat’s name, and won’t let you put the right password into the wrong site, which protects you from phishing.
- Consider getting a prepaid credit card for one-off purchases from new websites. A prepaid credit card has a fixed amount of money on it, which limits your risk if something goes wrong.
- Measure twice, cut once. Not all scams are easy to spot, but the cybercrooks behind many of them often make at least one obvious mistake. Don’t be so hasty that you fail to notice a giveway (whether it’s a typo, a weird date format, or a dodgy URL) that you later realise would have saved you.
- Whatever extra steps you take on Black Friday – keep on doing them all the time. If a cybersecurity precaution is worth taking on Black Friday then it is worth taking every day of the year.
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