From 2020 to this part the growth of purchases through the Internet has been notorious, as well as the use of digital platforms to make payments in substitution of physical money.
In Argentina, 25 million online purchase orders were registered in the first half of 2020 and in August 2021 the figure reached 80 million.
Something similar happened in Mexico and during the first half of 2021 there was an increase of 192% in purchases through ecommerce platforms such as Amazon or Mercadolibre, among others.
Taking into account this behavior and considering that at the time of the holidays many turn to the digital world, ESET, a leading company in proactive threat detection, asked users about how they feel when shopping online, if they suffered a security incident, and what other habits or preferences they have when buying.
26% of those surveyed said that they feel equally secure shopping both through their mobile phone and from their computer, although almost 50% said they feel more secure through the PC.
Regarding the protection measures implemented, 25% have double authentication factor (2FA) active on their devices and 57% have a antimalware solution.
On the other hand, although 80% of users do not save credit card details in the browser, 20% do.
“However, storing this information in the browser is not a recommended practice. Attackers use different methods to compromise online stores and steal users’ financial data at the time of purchase. For example, by installing malicious extensions in the user’s browser, exploiting vulnerabilities in platforms used for the creation of ecommerce stores or in installed plugins, or through XSS attacks, to name a few examples. ”, he comments Camilo Gutierrez Amaya, Head of the Research Laboratory of ESET Latin America.
Last year, for example, attackers committed more than 550 online stores from different parts of the world through Web Skimming attacks with the aim of stealing payment card data.
In that particular case, the criminals used fake website plugins, fake payment platforms, and injected malicious code into the victim’s site.
The platforms affected in this attack were mostly Magento (85% of the cases), although some of the compromised online stores used Shopify, BigCommerce and PrestaShop, in addition to WordPress.
As for the most used platforms to buy, 45% of those surveyed assured that they make purchases through social networks, but when asked if it is safer to buy through social networks or websites, 70% said that through websites and only 5% said through social networks.
Although there are many entrepreneurs who use social networks to sell their products, it is worth mentioning that the well-known platforms protect the user more against any problem with the purchase.
“In some cases, scammers start the deception on a popular platform and ask the potential victim to continue the operation outside of it, arguing that in this way they will be able to offer a more convenient price. However, this is something that is not recommended, since in case of being a scam the platform will not be able to support the victim or refund the money.. ”, Adds the ESET specialist.
In fact, the 9% of users claim to have been a victim of money theft on fake sites and 8% theft or leak of financial data.
elcapitalfinanciero.com