Scotland's Economy

Don’t get conned out of Christmas

November 30, 2015 by Tim Mitchell No Comments | Category Uncategorized

At this time of year as we start to focus on Christmas, what is uppermost in your thoughts for this festive season?

Catching up with family and friends? Giving and receiving gifts? Doing the Christmas shopping? A new gadget? Or maybe either celebrating away from home or just getting away from it all.

These are all exciting prospects but, sadly, this is a favourite time of year for criminals too, seizing the opportunity to exploit you when you’re focused on getting everything ready for the big day.

Every year, more of us use the internet increasingly to buy presents, stay in touch, book holidays and many other things we do at this time of year. And every year, that makes it increasingly easy for criminals to defraud us. Last Christmas, individuals and businesses in the UK reported losing a massive £16½ million to online fraudsters through online shopping and auction fraud … a 42% increase over the 2013 figure*. Black Friday and Cyber Monday – North American traditions now also firmly embedded over here – aren’t the only days fraudsters are active, they also exploit last minute shoppers, with many being stung between 20-23 December when trying to buy those last minute presents.

At Get Safe Online, we’ve put together a top ten list of tips to keep yourself, your family, your finances and your online devices safeguarded this Christmas. They cover everything from buying online to booking tickets, looking after that new phone or tablet to looking after your passwords. I urge you to take a look for yourself, as the advice really is expert, unbiased, easy to follow and what’s more – 100% free! We’ve called our campaign Don’t get conned out of Christmas because as I’ve written above, that’s what is happening more and more.

In the meantime, please just remember two things:

• Think twice before you click: make sure you’re comfortable with what you’re doing online and that nothing seems unusual.
• If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

So it just remains for me to wish you a happy and peaceful festive season and a great 2016.

*Online shopping and auction fraud reports made to Action Fraud during the Christmas period (1 November 2014- 28 February 2015). January & February 2015 have been included to account for any delays in reporting incidences. 

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