Amada Baldovinos 
Rio Grande Valley- As cyber-Monday approaches, and more people will likely be shopping online, a Utrgv Cyber security professor shares some important information to avoid getting scammed.
Utrgv Cyber security professor Mahmoud Quweider shares that there is usually a 20 to 30 percent spike in unsolicited emails and fake websites created to scam people online during the holidays.
The most common way to get scammed online is through email where cybercriminals may send out unrealistic shopping deals using fake websites to attract buyers.
“You want to avoid the small, unknown websites, the ones that pop up overnight” and “sometimes they will send you websites that look like eBay, or look like Bank of America, or like google, but you will see an extra letter there or an accent there,” said Quweider.
Using apps like amazon or Walmart can decrease your chances of getting scammed.
“For shopping, use your credit card only, don’t use your debit card” and “Sometimes they do this scamming, they send you a suspicious offer like a product in the normal marketplace is 50 dollars, but they sent it for 5 bucks so that’s pretty suspicious,” said S M Sarwar, a computer science major at Utrgv.
Quweider encourages people to download antivirus and systems like Norton and Mcafee.
“Personally, at home, I have Norton because it comes with a suite of tools, not only anti-virus but it clears the junk from your system, it gives you VPN which is a virtual private network for connecting to websites in a secure way,” said Quweider.
If you have been a victim of any type of scam, contact the Federal Trade Commission at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
