Stay alert when planning your travels this holiday season

Planning a trip this holiday season?

While, you spend a considerable amount of time shuffling money on online bookings for flights, hotels, and cabs, take care that you DO NOT share your details on doubtful-looking travel sites.

Just like holidays are a busy time for you and me, it’s an equally busy time for hackers, who have been found to increasingly target the tourism and hospitality industry during holidays. Reports suggest that billions of malicious login attempts are made for easy targets on websites belonging to hotels, airlines, cruise lines, etc.

Holidays are meant to be a time for endless fun and frolic and thus, to avoid any spoilers during this time, it is important that you follow few careful precautions:

1. Avoid Using Public Wi-Fi

Convenience outweighs consequences outright, especially when it comes to using smartphones. People are quick to log on to public Wi-Fi networks at coffee shops, airport lounges, hotel lobbies, etc. for making quick online transactions, browsing personal email, posting pics on social media, and whatnot.

While this may seem like a convenient and handy option, people often neglect the security risks associated with it. Public Wi-Fi networks are a haven for hackers to seek easy targets. Thus, a few minutes of online convenience may instead lead you to lose your banking details or land you in an embarrassing situation with your personal information being released publicly.

2. Limited Social Sharing

Most people love to share their current location on social networking sites while hopping across destinations. However, this kind of frequent sharing provides an easy way for criminals to know that your home or hotel room may be vacant, to plan a physical intrusion. Thus, limit and control the information that you share on social media, to protect yourself from becoming an easy bait for criminals.

3. Use Secured Internet Connection

In case you surf online for flight/hotel/cab bookings, remember to use only websites starting with “https://” because “s” stands for secure and your data is encrypted.

4. Update Your Software & Apps

While most of us are guilty of ignoring software updates, it is extremely important to check them before you travel, to protect yourself from critical vulnerabilities. You can also install security software like Quick Heal Mobile Security or Quick Heal Antivirus for Mobile that notifies you of suspicious and malicious apps before you attempt to download them.

5. Check Your Security Settings

Before you leave for your holiday, take care to TURN OFF all features that can automatically connect your phone, Macs and tablets to available Wi-Fi networks.

Most importantly… Be alert and wary of your digital environment to make sure that you have a gala time at your trip. Happy Holidays!!!