Cyber-Crime Crooks: Don't Let The Fraudsters Ruin Your Christmas

Christmas can be a boom time for online retailers and bargain-hunting consumers alike. At the same time however, lurking on the Dark Web are fraudsters and rogue employees looking to ruin your festive shopping spree. Commercial disputes lawyer and cyber-crime expert, Oliver Smith looks at combatting the festive online fraud onslaught.

The winter holidays are the gift that keeps on giving for cyber criminals who thrive on popular promotional dates such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the January sale season. Indeed, theft of sensitive data from online businesses is a serious and growing problem, according to official figures for the High Court which show a 25% rise in data theft cases by disgruntled employees in 2016. Increased reliance on technology has made businesses more vulnerable to theft of large volumes of valuable data such as customer email addresses or other sensitive information like profit margins or passwords. The number of passwords consumers now have to remember means they, understandably, often use the same or similar passwords for many of their accounts. When one is compromised it can make other accounts vulnerable.

There are, however, technical and legal solutions available to the savvy online retailer and shopper. Many big tech companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google offer encrypted password apps which will remember or create any number of complex different passwords for all your online accounts. The best part is that you only need to remember one password to use it. Meanwhile, there are many new...