MailFrontier Cautions Online Shoppers to Beware of Fraud This Holiday Season

Jupiter Research estimates that consumers will spend $16.8 billion online during the holidays and there is industry speculation that cyber crooks are gearing up to take advantage of this increasing trust in the Internet. In the past few months, emails known as phisher scams claiming to be from Best Buy, eBay, PayPal, and 1-800-Flowers have been used to steal personal information from unsuspecting consumers. In many cases, these deceptive messages contain real company logos and links to legitimate websites. But when a consumer follows the links to provide or verify personal information, they end up at an imposter site where scammers use the information gathered to steal valuable financial resources. MAILFRONTIER TOP FIVE TIPS TO HELP CONSUMERS AVOID ONLINE FRAUD AND IDENTITY THEFT 1. Never provide credit card or other personal information via an email request -- legitimate eCommerce sites should never ask for confidential information directly in the body of an email 2. If you are unsure about the validity of an email or website, call the company directly and ask if the correspondence or request is legitimate 3. If you get a report via email of fraudulent credit card charges or suspicious account usage, before responding to the email, call the company reporting the charges/account activity and confirm with its customer support that the transactions were made 4. Before you start shopping online, download an anti-fraud product -- MailFrontier, an advanced security company, offers a fraud filter (MailFrontier Matador 3.5 currently available for beta download) designed to keep these scams out of consumers email inboxes. Visit the companys website at www.mailfrontier.com 5. If you suspect your identity has been stolen, contact the FTC to report the incident through the website: http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/ , and contact one of these sites to request a credit report for you to review: Equifax, TransUnion, Experian.