Spam is down, alternative attack schemes are up.

According to a report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), cybercriminals (a great word) are targeting classified advertising sites at an increasing rate.

Security Week published this graph. 6,6% of all attacks are directed at the classifieds sector. In 2010, this sector showed the highest growth. Popular platform for the attackers are obvious sites like Craigslist and Autotrader.

Naturally the biggest fields of online crime are finance and online payment services (at 33% and 38% respectively). As Jumio is in the final stages of development, these statistics and possible counter measures are highly interesting.

Here’s the article, and the full pdf report here.

Sounds like a costly coalition, doesn’t it? Here are some things to keep in mind when paying for the presents for your loved ones that we found on the UK Telegraph website. Play it safe when you do your Christmas shopping (applies to all other shopping occasions as well, obviously).

First up, the safest way to buy is actually the credit card. Why? In the UK, you are protected as a customer through the Consumer Credit Act 1974. That means, if the online shop you are buying from goes bust before your goods are delivered and can’t reimburse you, your credit card provider will be liable for your costs.

When using credit cards for your online shopping, keep a few things in mind.
- The actual page you are asked to put your credit card number in, has to begin with ”https” rather than just ”http” to indicate that you are on a secure page.
- You will always be asked to enter the Secure Code additonally to your credit card number.
- Credit card companies will never ask you to send them your details.
- See if you can check the seller’s rating on shopping websites to get an idea, how trustworthy they are.
More pointers and the whole article can be found here.

Happy Christmas shopping everyone!

The holidays!
At this time of year, millions of people are spending millions of Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Yen, Zloty on their well-deserved time off work. Mostly somewhere in the sun, relaxing pool-side, lake-side or ocean-side with a frosty drink. Niiice!

We here at Jumio (temporary headquarters pictured right) are taking things generally easy, but being in the business we are in (payments, that is) we feel professionally obliged to ponder the aspect of payment when heading out of town for a vacation. This is how we stumbled across this article, giving out some scary stats on online holiday scams. Feel free to read here.

For those of you too relaxed to click on the link and read the whole article, here’s everything in a nutshell.

- Confirm the authenticity of travel providers before handing over payment details. Also applies to rental shops and the like.

- Check if a website is secure when entering you payment details. (A padlock symbol in the bottom right of the browser window or for the payment pages to begin with ‘https://’)

- Keep your receipts (usually PDFs sent to you) to keep track of your payments.

- Log out of sites when you are done with your bookings and payments.

(These are just a few tips, but you can find a more detailed list here.)

In some cases there is a lot of trust involved between provider and customer, especially if you book ahead. Think of a small rental place that only takes cash for their motor scooters or sail boats for example. Jumio, by the way, is working on raising that level of trust. For your next vacation.