Avoiding scammers during your Cyber Monday shopping

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - This Cyber Monday is expected to break records after Black Friday sales topped nine billion dollars. However, scammers see the heavy online traffic as a golden opportunity.

Southeast Missouri State University students, Isabela Greene and Cecilia Vansant are no strangers to online shopping.

”I buy a lot of clothes and I always like to decorate my room, much to my mom’s dismay, but I keep buying stuff for that,” Greene said.

“If you do all of it on Cyber Monday, then you don’t have to do it for the rest of the year, so it’s really good deals,” Vansant said.

From the moment you add something to your cart until it arrives at your door, Matt Hopkins said scammers are looking for their chance. Hopkins is the President of Broadtek, a cybersecurity company. According to him, there are some things to keep your eye on while online shopping.

“Is that domain the actual store, or is it a letter off?” Hopkins said. “You want to make sure that the website that you’re going to is really valid for the website that you are shopping.”

Online scammers are after three things.

“They’re looking for your credit card number, your expiration date, and the code on the back,” Hopkins said.

Even after Cyber Monday, there’s another risk online shoppers face.

“There’s always going to be some subs that take advantage of that, and try to steal packages off people’s porches,” Corporal Ryan Droege with Cape Girardeau Police Department said.

They’re called porch pirates. Cpl. Droege said they get calls about packages being stolen all year long.

“It happens more around these times with all of the holiday shopping going on,” he said.

If you create an account on the courier’s website, it allows you to give your delivery person exact instructions on where to leave your package. To try to keep your packages safe, he suggests having it placed at your back door or seeing if it can be delivered to your work.

“To a place where people are always there and people can see it arrive and take possession of it,” Droege said.

Green said she double checks to make sure websites are valid before she enters her information. She said as a college student, it helps you stick to your budget.

“I got my boyfriend’s done for under a hundred dollars because of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so it definitely helps when you don’t have as much income as most people do around the holidays.”

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