Author: Rebecca

The holiday shopping season has allowed the channel to become a standard form of comparison and purchasing.

The rapidly growing m-commerce trends of browsing, comparing, and actually buying on smartphones and tablets aren’t just a little piece of the fringe, anymore, but are starting to officially become mainstream.

Holiday shoppers, this year, have shown that even when they don’t make purchases, they use their devices.

Many analysts have been looking directly toward the purchasing data to determine whether or not m-commerce trends have been pointing toward the mainstream. However, when that data is considered, while there has been massive year over year growth, it still represents only a sliver of the total online purchases and even less of the buying as a whole. When the definition of mobile shopping is broadened, it soon becomes clear that purchasing is only one of several behaviors for which shoppers use their smartphones and tablets.

These m-commerce trends are important to recognize as they are often deciding factors for online and in store purchases.

That said, even without taking the browsing, price comparisons, receipt of advertising and discount coupons, and other activities into account, there has still been a great deal of growth, so far, over the holiday shopping season when it comes to mobile commerce purchases. But it seems to be in those “process” activities on the way to actually buying that small screens truly shine. IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark reported that almost 40 percent of all of the online traffic on Black Friday and almost a third of all online traffic on Cyber Monday was from smartphones and tablets.

Even though this did not represent the purchases being made, it shows that people are using their smartphones and tablets to visit websites and to look at companies, products, and prices. Because the devices are always with their owners, they are automatically using them, first, to perform quick searches, to locate nearby businesses, to find out whether or not the item that they want is in stock, and to discover the best possible price.

Three years ago, only 4 percent of Cyber Monday’s online traffic came from mobile. This makes it clear that m-commerce trends are headed toward – if they have not already achieved – mainstream status.

Cybercriminals are not missing their opportunity to take advantage of unsuspecting smartphone users.

This year, there has been a very large increase in the amount of shopping that is being conducted over smartphones, from price comparisons to actual purchases, and with this trend has come a rise in mobile commerce security issues that are leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many shoppers.

Many companies are now releasing advice and tips to help shoppers to stay safe and to protect their sensitive data.

Among those releasing mobile commerce security support information is McAfee. In fact, that company has recently produced its 12 scams of Christmas to help to underscore the importance of this problem and to alert consumers as to some of the most common forms of fraud. This can help shoppers to know what action to take to help to protect themselves from falling victim to cybercriminals this year.

Malware is causing mobile commerce security issues from a broad range of different sources.

According to McAfee, the biggest scams from the year include the following:

• Shopping apps that look as though they are official – especially those that come with company or celebrity endorsements, but that are meant for stealing or sharing personal information.
• Holiday SMS text messages – many carry a FakeInstaller malicious code that fool an Android device user into thinking that it is a real app installer, except that this then sends out premium rate texts from the device.
• Too good to be true gift ads – clicking on offers that are far too good to be true can install malware into the device.
• Fake seasonal travel deals – when these links are used, hackers wait for private data to be entered so that it can be stolen.
• Fake e-cards and greetings – false but real looking e-cards can install viruses and malware when opened.
• Deceptive online games – these primarily target younger users, promising full versions of popular games, installing viruses and malware when downloaded.
• Fake shipping notifications – shipping updates that appear to be from popular retailers contain malware released when opened.
• False gift cards – promoted by way of deceptive social media ads.
• Holiday SMiShing – through messages where the cybercriminal poses as a credit card company or bank and requests financial data for security purposes.
• Fake charities – asking for donations though the funds won’t go to the designated cause.
• Romance and friendship scams – messages pretending to be from known individuals but that eventually request usernames, passwords, credit card information and others.
• False online retailers – McAfee revealed earlier this year that this mobile commerce security issue affects one in five online consumers, including those using smartphones.