Tag: mobile commerce security

Mobile commerce security not as important as convenience for holiday shoppers

A Trustlook survey showed that consumers will ignore certain risks in exchange for easy shopping.

Mobile commerce security is an important issue this holiday season. Seventy one percent of smartphone owners plan to use their mobile devices to help them along some point of the shopping journey.

Trustlook has recently released a survey with results from which it has made its holiday predictions.

The Trustlook survey focused on smartphone users with Android phones. The goal was to accurately forecast consumer behaviors throughout the holiday shopping season this year. What they found was that 40 percent of the survey participants actually prefer shopping over smartphones. This despite the mobile commerce security concerns that have been holding back the channel’s adoption.

Mobile Commerce Security - Shopping via smartphoneAnother 18 percent of the survey participants said that their preference was to shop in-store during the holidays. The results revealed that 43 percent of smartphone users will be making over $250 in purchases over their devices. The top m-commerce apps were identified as Amazon, eBay and Walmart.

That said, shoppers haven’t taken adequate mobile commerce security steps to protect themselves.

Even though 70.35 percent of participants in the survey said they planned to make a purchase over a smartphone or tablet, they were not protecting their personal and financial data. In fact, a wide majority of people hadn’t even installed security software. Sixty four percent of survey respondents did not have a mobile security app installed on their device.

Trustlook CEO, Zllan Zhang, said “Mobile shoppers need to be more cautious than ever,” adding that “This risk isn’t going away as mobile shopping activity ramps up.”

This is an interesting finding as concerns over mobile security have been among the top cited reasons that people have held off shopping over smartphones. It appears that there is a growing group of people who are moving ahead with smartphone based shopping regardless of that potential issue.

The hope from security firms is that if consumers are willing to ignore the mobile commerce security risk, they will at least take more steps to protect themselves. There are several small steps such as security apps that can help to keep sensitive data safer.

Black Friday mobile security threats to explode through Cyber Monday

Consumers are being cautioned to be exceptionally careful of public WiFi hotspots and fake apps.

With shoppers out by the millions today, trying to find the best deal, Black Friday mobile security efforts will be critically important. Cybercriminals know that consumers will be downloading mobile commerce apps and will be tapping into public WiFi hotspots. This provides them with the perfect opportunity to launch their scams.

Anyone planning to use their smartphones should be aware of these types of fraud so they can protect themselves.

Anyone hoping not to have to deal with Black Friday mobile security problems will need to inform themselves. They will also need to take precautions. Fake m-commerce apps are expected to abound, as will fake Wi-Fi hotspots in busy locations such as malls. A growing number of security firms have been reminding consumers to take care before blindly trusting an application or internet connection.

Hackers love opportunities such as Black Friday mobile security breaches to grab private information.

Black Friday Mobile SecurityTwo of the companies that have tried to warn consumers of the types of mobile security threats that can occur on days like today are RiskIQ and Skycure.

Mobility strategist Brian Duckering of Skycure blogged that “Cyber criminals are increasing our risk of using mobile devices while shopping, whether it is Black Friday or Cyber Monday.” He added that “Going to physical stores and connecting to risky Wi-Fi networks, or shopping online both pose increasing risks we should all be aware of.”

RiskIQ, an enterprise security firm, said that there is a greater cyber security risk for smartphone users this year than there was in 2015. Due to the larger number of mobile device users, there are also more active cyber criminals. They target shoppers using their mobile phones to discover products or even make the purchases while using in-store WiFi.

This year, RiskIQ predicts that nearly a third (30 percent) of online Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending will be over mobile devices. At the same time, Skycure’s forecast is that mobile payments will be used three times as much this year as last year. These open the doors to more Black Friday mobile security issues and it’s up to consumers to protect themselves.