Wiretrend

’Tis the season of online shopping—Fa la la la LAAAAN! La la la la!

Before exchanging your shopping cart for a cartel of US parcels, here’s a gaggle of safety tips for online shoppers.

- Big Vendors. It’s good to stick with who you know. They’ve already built a reputation and they often come complete with safety features like encrypted transactions.

- Outside the Box. If vendors, say, from Ebay or Etsy, ask to take the transaction outside of the store, they’re already violating their Terms of Use and deceiving the retailer… so why trust them?

- Email Avalanche. Check the privacy policy before you hit submit to make sure that your email address only goes where you tell it to.

- Don’t Share. Public computers could be compromised with keystroke logging malware and open networks can expose your transactions to anyone with interest. If you’re using public Wi-Fi, disable your Bluetooth and Printer Sharing to keep wandering eyes away from your hard drive.

- Save it. Keep records of your transactions, from receipts to confirmation numbers. In case of e-glitches, you can prove your purchase.

- Tips Galore. Try the Tech Talk Podcast about shopping safely with Symantec’s Lynn Hargrove, or Symantec’s Holiday Shopping page for more tips on shopping safely this holiday season.

Situation 1: Your boss invites you to a corporate party tonight. You will have thirty minutes to run home, change, and catch a ride. What do you wear?

Situation 2: You ask your partner, again, about an outfit only to realize that they’ve worn jeans and t-shirts for they past three years: they can’t be trusted.

Solution? Social networks for fashion lovers, from street-watchers to runway… watchers, offer a community of like-minded people who can give fashion advice, deconstruct an outfit, and, of course, point users to online retailers. Fashionistas can Geek out like any WOW player while WOW players get tips on what to wear to the corporate party.

Interested? Just pivot, turn, and click.

Fashionising.com – A blog/ community that organizes fashion events. It’s best for runway strutters and lovers.

Syltemob – For the younger, street-watcher crowd. Members get their own profiles, invite others to be in their “style council” and rate photos of each other’s outfits.

Copenhagenstreetstyle – Learn to deconstruct an outfit with daily photos of Europe’s street style.

Months before saying “I do”, brides-to-be are engaging with a world of cyber matrimony, from buying dresses and rings online to creating blogs and websites for family and friends. A plethora of personal information, from the wedding location to the bride and groom’s home addresses, mothers’ maiden names, and contact information is suddenly made public with announcements, registries, and more. Here are some simple tips to help you or someone you know say “I do” to keeping their private information just that.

Password Protection: Wedding blogs and websites are rich with personal details. To keep them closed to the public but open to family and friends, consider password protection.

Privacy Policy: Websites, vendors, reception sites, registries… a lot of different folks will require phone numbers, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. Before supplying your data, check the privacy policy: Is it safe? Who will see it?

Registries: Some registries make personal information, like the couple’s home address, public. Before you register with a company, ask exactly how visible your wish list will be.

Better Business: Sure, a ring or dress for hundreds (or thousands) of dollars less online seems appealing, but is it safe? Before investing in something site unseen, check the Better Business Bureau online to make sure that your purchase is legit.

Botnets: Collections of thousands of computers owned by regular people and secretly controlled by cybercriminals.

Botnets can work by taking control of hundreds, or thousands, of individual computers. Cybercriminals can tell their botnet armies to install spyware like keystroke logging malware, and to report back sensitive information, like banking login passwords or credit card numbers.

Unfortunately, most owners with zombie computers don’t know that their systems are infected.

Botnets can also attack. In 2007 the Internet in Estonia was shut down due to denial-of-service attacks (trans: being overwhelmed by botnet contact), and Georgia was severely disabled by Russian botnets in 2008. Other than taking entire countries offline, botnets could disable news sources, transportation websites, or overpower other highly important web sites.

Luckily, avoiding botnets can be as simple as running Norton AntiVirus. Keep your computer updated and protected to avoid joining the zombie ranks.

So, your office mate went as a Facebook profile this year, leaving you without the perfect costume. No worries: we’ve got you covered. You, and all last-minute, late-night-at-the-office revelers can now dress up as a truly scary character: the Cybercriminal. With zombie armies, stolen identities, and a legion of malware, cybercriminals are the ultimate super villains.

Every three seconds, an identity is stolen while cybercrime is making more money than drug trafficking in the US. It’s a serious problem with scary results for anyone who falls victim to a drive-by download, a phishing scheme, or scareware tactics. We created the Cybercrime Halloween Kit so you can help raise awareness of the shadowy folks who perpetrate these crimes. Plus, it’s fun. Everybody will get a kick out of seeing those familiar spam overtures used to try to lure you in.

Just download our handy kit, pick up some candy, and get ready to trick or treat potential victims who Allow or Deny your sneaky tricks!

Get Your Cybercriminal Costume Kit Here

Instead of hiding behind the coral reef of communication, Trojans are airing themselves openly in the matrix of social networks like Twitter and Google Groups. By making themselves conspicuous in the social scene, they become relegated to wallflowerdom—like the typical blog started by, say, anyone not Paris Hilton—unread, unnoticed, uninteresting. This deep-end of social networks gives cybercriminals the room to spread out and unleash commands, silently, to thousands of infected computers.

Twitter was implicated in a major botnet called Infostelealer.Bancos that eavesdropped on the keystrokes of thousands of computers, stealing and caching valuable passwords. Recently Symantec’s Security Response Team found another botnet using Google Groups to distribute commands. The social networks aren’t necessarily at fault for the malware. Like any tool, how they’re used depends on the hands that wield them.

Because social networks are harder to vet and malware hidden in plain site is easy to miss, expect more of the same in the future. Tsunamis more. You might even one day be virtual “friends” with the enemy.