Ho ho hoax.

Police are offering tips to cyber shoppers, to guard them against online hoaxes, as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas shopping season begin.

Among other things, shoppers should be on guard against fake auctions, fake or stolen gift cards and phishing attacks, disguised as advertisements.

“If something doesn’t seem right or it seems too good to be true, trust your intuition,”Toronto police media relations officer Jeniffer Sidhu said in an interview.

Here are a dozen tips from Toronto and York Regional police and the FBI to make your holiday shopping safer:

1. Don’t respond to unsolicited e-mail or open links in unsolicited e-mail. One scam is to direct you to follow a link or call a number in order to correct a supposed problem or to update information. This is sometimes a way to steal personal information.

2. Don’t open an attachment unless it’s from a known sender.

3. Be careful of how you buy gift cards. The safest way is directly from the merchant or an authorized sales merchant.

5. Avoid public computers. “Someone else could be logging in and getting all of your information,” Sidhu said.

6. Monitor your credit card bills and bank statements. Make sure you’re not hit with unwarranted charges.

7. Read feedback ratings with skepticism. If they have 100 per cent positive ratings, that might be a clue that something’s not right. Also be leery if all of the feedback ratings were posted around the same date and time.

8. Be wary of filling out online forms that ask for personal information. Don’t give out your SIN, PIN, health card or driver’s license numbers. Don’t be shy about doubl- checking contact information through an independent source like a reputable Internet directory or billing statement or asking asking to call back companies when discussing money matters.

9. Compare links in emails soliciting business to web address links and make sure they match before going further.

10. Log onto official websites directly rather than trying to link to it through unsolicited e-mails. You want secure “https://” sites.

11. Shred paper documents before disposal and erase hard drive from old computers and some photocopiers before disposing of them.

12. Use passwords on your credit card, bank and phone accounts and make them far better than “0000” or “1234.” Avoid using any easily verifiable information on them.

See Original Article: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/11/27/cyber_shopping_12_tips_from_police_to_foil_cyber_scammers.html

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