To protect yourself, make sure you have numerous, secure passwords and only purchase from sites you trust
Tim Wheeldon is joint managing director of Fluent Money
Tis the season to be jolly, to share the festive joy and to be with those we love…at least, that’s the Christmas dream we all share.
However, it doesn’t take the grinches among us to see that beneath the veneer of festive cheer there lies a cold reality for the world’s Christmas shoppers; that the “most wonderful time of the year” is also potentially the most dangerous, with more threats posed to our personal finances than ever before.
Recent technological advances have advanced to allow us to shop and bank whenever and wherever we wish, with record numbers shopping online and banking on their phones. This has been accompanied by a rise in yet more shopping hysteria, with America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday washing up on British shores to fuel the frenzy of payday loan-funded present-buying.
The sensible and parsimonious shopper will be able to resist retailers who encourage aggressive spending a full month before Christmas; it may prove trickier this year for them to be on guard against the onslaught of cyber hackers, who can use online platforms to attack the funds which shoppers believe to be safe and within their own control.
2014 was the year of leaked eBay passwords and published private messages, which did a great deal to draw public attention to the importance of online security. Cyber security firm NCC Group recently released findings from a ‘Trust in the Internet’ poll, which found that 62% of consumers are more concerned about online security now than they have ever been, while 56% of consumers said that in order to complete online transactions, they often must share information that they would normally not feel comfortable sharing online.
Yet despite the rising awareness of cyber security threats to shoppers, any parent who has brawled over the last Furby, Tamagotchi or Tickle Me Elmo in a shop or suffered a nervous breakdown in the middle of a Christmas market will have little difficulty suppressing these concerns.
The danger comes from the allure of both simple online shopping processes and banking completed from the warmth and perceived safety of your own home. But as with contactless debit cards, cloud technology and social media passwords, every new technological innovation has the potential for a hacking expert to decipher its systems and use the technology for their personal gain.
Some of the largest retailers in the world have felt the cyber sting this year, from eBay having to request that customers change their passwords to a glitch at Amazon reducing all items to 1p and losing small businesses thousands of pounds. No matter how cryptic your password, or how dependable the retailer’s customer service procedures, few systems are infallible and trusting these providers to protect you will always carry some risks.
For a cyber hacker, no Christmas gift could be greater than the false sense of security that a shopper wears like a warm woolly coat. This Christmas it is vital that shoppers use their online banking tools to scour every transaction and remain focused on their bank balances to catch any frauds that might have wriggled through the net.
To protect yourself, make sure you have numerous, secure passwords and only purchase from sites you trust. Paying cash in stores is another alternative for avoiding the situation altogether.
These warnings should not dampen the Christmas cheer, but remind us that the season does not have to be dominated by spending, and that the mania of Black Friday and other pre-Christmas flash sales need not detract from a time to spend with friends and family.
It’s always easy to get carried away with the prospect of opening fantastic gifts on Christmas Day, but that shouldn’t mean putting yourself at risk. So enjoy buying for your loved ones and sharing the joy, but keep one eye on those card details and avoid having a nightmare before Christmas.
