TAMPA, Fla. — Now that election season is over, cybersecurity experts believe cybercriminals have shifted their focus to holiday shopping.
“Just in the last one month we’ve seen like a 495% increase in overall scams related to Black Friday. Even the Christmas season seems to be starting early for the scammers because starting in October, early November, we’re already seeing like a 340% increase in scams related to Christmas,” said Abhishek Karnik, head of Threat Research and Intelligence for McAfee.
Karnik believes it’s likely more people will fall victim to online shopping scams this holiday season.
“Just the volume of scams makes us believe there’s going to be more activity on social media platforms and therefore a repeat of all the misinformation or the A.I. related scams either deepfakes or fake images, fake reviews will sort of start popping up again on a higher scale than we’ve seen before,” said …