Holiday season is in full swing and that means consumers and
businesses are more vulnerable than ever for identity
fraud. Between sharing wish lists and downloading apps for easy shopping,
social media and mobile technology pose huge holiday threats. Not only do
consumers need to protect themselves from identity theft, but companies need to
take the extra initiative to guard their reputation to ensure that consumers
will be return buyers.
Social Media
The world is no longer round since the upcoming of social
media, it has become flat and interconnected with a the click of a mouse. People
are able to connect with each other in a faster, easier way. Perhaps the most
convenient part of social media is also the most dangerous. Users are able to,
and often do, share every aspect of their lives via social media. This leaves
little to no information private for only the user to know. Things such as full
birthday, high school name, pet name, and even parents names are easily found
on a social media profiles. Sound familiar? These are very traditional security
questions asked when verifying an account or identity on most online platforms.
Social media has
made these questions not so secure when asking for proof of identification. In
additional to sharing personal information, social media also poses a threat
because many accounts have integrated logins with social profiles such as
Facebook. So that means if you sign up for an account on xyz.com and log in
using your Facebook and then link your credit card on your xyz.om account,
someone with your Facebook credentials could access your bank account.
Mobile
Mobile poses very similar threats as social media.
While its easy and convenient to link your credit card account to mobile apps and log ins, it turns mobile phones into walking keys into consumers bank
accounts. Mobile
security is still a hurdle for many companies as it is still fairly new to
some industries. Even though banks have adopted mobile technology fairly
quickly, mobile banking still is a threat to companies and consumers alike. As
McNelley stated last year, 90% of bank risk executives say mobile
banking will create the next big wave of financial fraud. The Mobile Threat
Report for Q3 of 2012, also illustrates that mobile fraud is still an on
going issues. It states that 71.5% of mobile fraud is in the form of a Trojan.
These Trojans can attack apps that store personal account information and
contract lists and then forwards the information to a remote address.
Whether its shopping the old fashioned way, or looking into
fraud
prevention measures, do your part this holiday season to protect yourself
and company.
[Contributed by EVS Marketing]
