Online scams target us year-round.
But during the holiday shopping season, they are more aggressive than ever, luring people looking for deals.
Stephen Casper is a long-time real estate agent who has seen a lot over the years. So when he recently received an email about a free holiday gift from Costco, his internal alarm went off.
“It said ‘congratulations,'” he said, reading the email. “It said I have been selected for an exclusive reward.”
Not only did it feature a bad cellphone image of a Costco store, but it was from a strange email address.
“It had nothing to do with Costco,” Casper said.
But no sooner than he deleted that one, he received another suspicious email about joining a lawsuit for veterans who served at Camp LeJeune in the 1970s and ’80s.
“It said I was entitled to $50,000,” he said. “I knew darn well that was an instant scam.”
He said he had never even visited Camp LeJeune, let alone served there.
A scam email that you open up or respond to is just one of the ways hackers can get between you and your personal information. So it’s important to set up barriers to stop them.
5 things you can do
Kim Key, a security analyst with PCMag, said there are five simple ways to improve your online safety, in about 10 minutes.
- Invest in a password manager that way you don’t have to remember all those complex passwords yourself. “The human brain isn’t meant to do that,” Kim said. “We aren’t meant to store that much information.”
- Update your web browser. “Hackers are always…
