Shop Online During Ramadan Safely, Never Click On Suspicious Links!

Here are tips to stay safe from phishing during Ramadan (Photo: Pixabay)

JAKARTA - When welcoming Ramadan, families in Indonesia begin their annual preparations including hunting for many promos online. Cybercriminals, skilled with their knowledge of current trends and events, are also launching phishing sites to target users.

For example, Kaspersky's latest analysis for 2021 shows its anti-phishing system successfully blocked 253,365,212 phishing links globally.

In Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Kaspersky recorded the highest number of users exposed to phishing attempts in 2021 with 9.90 percent, followed by Malaysia (8.49 percent) and Thailand (7.93 percent). Indonesia recorded 7.70 percent while Vietnam recorded 7.45 percent of users. Singapore (3.30 percent) has the lowest percentage of users affected by this type of threat.

Last year, Indonesia experienced a 3.9 percent decline in the share of users affected by attack attempts compared to 11.60 percent in 2020.

“Reducing the number of phishing attacks does not mean our online data and finances are more secure. In the past year, we have seen a decline in various types of threats such as mobile malware and phishing. This is because "spray and pray" is no longer the preferred method for cybercriminals," said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky, quoted Monday, April 4.

Online shopping demand will remain high in 2021. This is in line with the phishing trend. Online shopping and electronic payments are an important part of celebration and holiday activities for many people.

"Therefore, we urge the Indonesian people to be vigilant, especially against sales announcements and attractive offers delivered via email, text messages, social media posts, or even telephone," he added.

To avoid falling victim to phishing scams during Ramadan, here are some suggestions you can consider.

Never click on suspicious links that are sent to you via text, SMS, messenger application or any other platform. Get to know your digital bank's official communication channels. It is important to identify other official communication channels such as social media, website, email, and WhatsApp of the digital bank you are using, to avoid scams impersonating the related bank. Turn on notifications. Enabling real-time notifications on your mobile phone can help you act quickly if there are complaints of fraud from your digital bank authorization Avoid excessive emotional attachment when shopping online, grand celebrations will usually lead to speed to get the best deals within a limited time. Always remember that thinking twice before shopping online is highly recommended so that you can avoid the risk of online fraud. Only share or allow access to your information with third parties when absolutely necessary, to minimize the information falling into the wrong hands. Including, don't share the OTP code with anyone but yourself. Set up two-factor authentication to protect your account. Many phishing attacks aim to hijack accounts, but even if attackers get hold of the login and password, you can still stop them from logging into the account, by setting up two-factor authentication if possible.