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Cyber criminals not on Holiday this Festival Season

As phishers and cybersquatters sharpen their tactics with the Christmas vacation approaching, online shoppers find it difficult to conduct their transactions, making it irritating for businesses, according to security analysts at MarkMonitor, a company that tracks brand abuse on Web.

The term cybersquatting refers to hijacking a phrase or word through the Web domain and to lead to a site not under the ownership of the actual trademark owner. This Web problem is one of MarkMonitor's significant concerns for the holiday period. The volume of cybersquatting has been increasing at 20% every year and rose by 10% at the end of last quarter. These figures are likely to match the expectations for this season as well, said MarkMonitor's Chief Marketing Officer, Frederick Felman, as reported by SearchSecurity.com on November 19, 2007.

According to the Vice President of strategic accounts, Paul Henry, at Secure Computing, the festival season is a big opportunity for hackers. ComputerWorld reported this on November 20, 2007. The year is likely to be a time for all sorts of web-borne malware thrusting attacks on consumers, Henry said with concern.

A recent study by Forrester Research suggests that almost 11% of shoppers would be doing 75% of their seasonal shopping online making an equivalence of $33 Billion in 2007, an increase from $27 Billion from 2006.

Unfortunately, 78% of computers in the US do not have adequate defenses against hackers and other cyber criminals while 64% of the people in the country cannot know if the site they intend to visit is safe or not, a recent study by McAfee/NCSA on online safety found.

According to MarkMonitor, phishers are also active players this holiday. The company found some common spam mails in which many phishers were targeting consumers with offers of gift cards for free in exchange for filling out an empty form. While these forms requested for personal information like birthdates and Social Security numbers, there were no gift cards in the line, Felman said.

Some tips to stay protected during the vacation are to check out the veracity of the online seller, verifying the return policies, and being sure of what they offer.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

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