Hackers are already prepared for the upcoming black Friday and holiday deals. But, the question is that are you prepared to tackle them?

Everyone waits for the Black Friday deals, so do hackers. Every year, many users get tricked by attackers and losses their personal and financial details. However, there are many secured payment methods are available, but still malicious emails and hot deals pop ups trick user successfully.

Bad actors are stealing personal information like passwords and credit card numbers, compromising computers and phones, and blackmailing retailers with hopes of lining their pockets. For example, researchers at RiskIQ found frequent cases of criminals linking the names of legitimate brands to sketchy applications and Web sites in order to lure unsuspecting shoppers.

The research checked out the top five brands in e-commerce against blacklisted URLs that contained their names and the term Black Friday. They had a total of 1,950 that tied to spam, malware or phishing and sometimes more than one of them.

There are few steps that can be taken to outreach the hacking attacks on this holiday deals season:

Watch out for free WiFi:

Everyone out there is searching for free wifi to stay connected with their friends and families. But, the free WiFi are not really safe. Hacker-compromised Wi-Fi access points can monitor user keystrokes or divert users to malicious Web sites.

Fake Wi-Fi networks may use the word “free” in the SSID of the network, or the name of legitimate stores. For example the report says it found Wi-Fi networks named Macysfreewifi and AppleStore in places where there was no Macy’s or Apple store.

Fake WiFi are simply misconfigured and may expose your communications to anyone who may be interested in viewing them, while others are being monitored or even set up by cyber criminals specifically to steal your data.

Avoid clicking on hot deals:

On daily basis we encounter many popups on many websites that are mostly not necessary or irrelevant. However, these are the attacking vector by hackers to gain user’s personal detail and financial detail or to divert them to a malicious web page.

These types of popups are spread in a huge number during the holiday seasons, in consideration to high rate of online purchasers and users. By avoiding these popups, you can defeat this attacking vector and stay secured.

Stop clicking on Ads and visit the website directly:

Major shopping sites were hit by malvertising, ads that download malware. The attacker uses themes of different trusted websites to acquire the customer’s detail.

“Themes include payment-related fraudulent emails purporting to be from PayPal, delivery confirmation emails claiming a package is being delivered, coupons promoting products or retailers, and fake refunds”.

By avoiding these phishing, popups and free WiFi’s, you can prevent attackers to reaching your personal details or even your device. These are the most common tips that can protect you from hacking attacks during sale seasons.