Watch Out for Fraud While Holiday Shopping

(StatePoint) While gifts are being wrapped and lights are being hung, fraudsters are devising ways to leverage the holidays to scam you out of your money. Because an urgency to buy gifts and find deals make the season a time of high risk, it is more important than ever to exercise caution and to know that scams can come in-person, by phone, by email, by text or even via social media.

Last year, Darktrace researchers detected a 692% increase in Black Friday-themed phishing attacks in late November, where fraudsters sent emails to trick people into taking certain actions, and Visa identified a 284% increase in fake and spoofed merchant websites in the four months leading up to the holiday season. A Norton Cyber Safety survey found that around a third of Americans have been targeted by a holiday shopping scam, and around half of those targeted actually fell victim.