The holiday shopping season is in full gear, and Santa Claus will soon be on his way. If you haven’t started shopping yet, now’s the time to get things going. Gift-giving and shipping deadlines are fast approaching, but try not to panic. Security experts say you need to think before you pull out your credit card, because scammers and other online Scrooges want to take advantage of your haste and trick you into falling for fake deals and other shopping-related scams.
It’s the big jump in online buying combined with countless busy and distracted shoppers that makes this time of year so enticing for scammers, says Darius Kingsley, head of consumer banking practices at Chase. “Many of us kind of have our guard up throughout the year, at least to some extent,” Kingsley said. “Then it’s late November and you’ve only just started your holiday shopping so panic sets in. It’s kind of all of those typical emotions, but that does cloud your judgement a little bit.”
This year’s online holiday sales are expected to set records. Adobe projects that US online sales will hit $240.8 billion this holiday shopping season, representing 8.4% growth over the same period last year. They got a good start over the holiday weekend. Adobe says online sales for this year’s Cyber Week, the five-day period that includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, hit $41.1 billion, representing an 8.2% increase over the same period last year.