Avoid Phishing during the Holidays (Eat Ham Instead!)
With the holiday season in our midst, we feel it’s important to inform you of the potential phishing emails that may land in your inbox. Soon our inboxes will see a flood of phishing emails focusing in on holidays specials. These emails will be attempting to scam you out of your money or confidential business data. Previously organizations like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have even sent alerts regarding phishing scams during the holidays.
Great (phishing email) deals
During this time phishers are notorious for stating they have great prices on hard to find items. They may even mention that you have won a free gift card. Most of these emails will include either a link for you to click or an attachment to download. Oftentimes these are malicious and are looking to steal data by installing malware on your computer or smartphone. Other times the link will take you to a login page to steal your username and password to get access to your accounts.
Support our (holiday phishing email) charity
Unfortunately, during this time of giving and charity, phishers will “tug on your heart-strings” to take advantage of your good intentions. You may receive emails from either national or local charities asking for support of their cause. Before interacting with any of these emails it is important to verify that the emails is not a phishing attempt. For clarification, we want to stress that these emails may be legitimate, but beware of the potential for phishing emails to be disguised as such. One of the ways to decipher a bad email from a good email is by searching for the charity online. You should use your favorite search engine to perform your search. In this manner you can donate directly on the website instead of through the email.
Pass along the good tidings (with this phishing email during the holidays)
Lastly, you may get emails from friends and family asking you to pass along good tidings in chain emails. Oftentimes these emails will have a link, maybe it is even embedded in an image hoping you click on it. These links often have malicious malware attached to them. The hacker’s goal is to encourage you will spread this to all of your email contacts. These emails may be even more prevalent as many family and friends decide to celebrate the holidays via the usage of technology instead of face-to-face. 
We often see an increase in phishing attacks during the holidays, so don’t be caught by a phisher! For more information on phishing and other cybersecurity trends and topics, check out Small Business, Big Threat!