‘Tis the season to keep an eye on your personal data

The holiday season is upon us. Chestnuts are roasting by the open fire, people are decking the halls — and data thieves are gearing up to get their hands on your personal information. Fifty-five percent of people have been the victim of some sort of financial fraud, and it does in fact spike during the holidays: a Capital One survey found that 41 percent of people either experienced or knew someone who experienced some kind of data theft last holiday season. Here’s how to help keep your financial information secure while you’re doing your Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping, so that the only thing financial fraudsters will find is a big lump of coal.

According to a survey by the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America, only 57 percent of people check their score annually. If you count yourself among those populations, there’s never been an easier time to change your ways. The website annualcreditreport.com allows you to get a free credit report once a year and includes reports from the three major credit bureaus: TransUnion®, Experian®, and Equifax®.

Signing up for a free credit monitoring service like CreditWise® from Capital One® makes it much easier to watch your credit year-round. You don’t need to be a Capital One customer to enroll, and CreditWise gives you free access to your credit score and your TransUnion credit report, both of which are updated weekly. CreditWise also offers dual bureau credit alerts from Experian and TransUnion: when something meaningful changes on either credit report, CreditWise sends you a credit alert so you can quickly identify signs of error, theft, or fraud. It can also help you figure out what to do about potential fraud so you can get back to your holiday shopping faster.

Financial fraud is heavily dependent on someone getting a hold of your social security number and plugging it into credit applications. So there’s a pretty easy rule of thumb to follow when it comes to giving out your SSN while shopping: Don’t, unless absolutely necessary. Legitimate shopping sites will never ask for your social, and if you get an email asking for it from a “customer service rep” you should assume it’s a scammer. CreditWise tracks the names and addresses associated with credit applications linked to your social security number, as reported by Experian. CreditWise also alerts you to new uses of your SSN, so you can find out if someone else is using it to apply for credit.

The dark web sounds like something a superhero should be fighting, but in reality it refers to a portion of the internet that can only be accessed via specialized browsers and encrypted networks like Tor and I2P. The dark web is a favored domain of financial fraudsters because of its anonymity; tracking and identification of dark web users is hidden behind layers of encryption.

It’s also home to a thriving marketplace for pieces of sensitive information like social security numbers, but credit monitoring services like CreditWise are offering dark web scans where they analyze thousands of unsafe sites, hacking forums, and illicit digital marketplaces. For example, CreditWise will alert you if it finds your social security number or email address on the dark web so you can take action.

Americans spent more than $11 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, setting a digital record across the two shopping holidays. Holiday retail sales are set to outpace 2017, but according to Capital One’s survey, 85 percent of Americans believe the holidays are a riskier time to shop. That means it’s an important time to help keep your online shopping secure.

That same survey found that 37 percent of Americans say that identity theft and financial fraud are their no. 1 concern about holiday shopping — even more than those concerned with overspending during the season — but only 17 percent took more action to protect their score or detect fraud during the 2017 holidays. Of those surveyed who said they were a victim of fraud during the holidays, roughly a third of them said it was because an organization that had their personal or financial information experienced a data breach. This could explain why 66 percent of them dislike when stores force them to save credit card info on their sites.

The good news: Many banks and credit card companies let you sign up for automatic purchase notifications that flag when your card is used to make a purchase. Capital One’s intelligent assistant Eno℠ , flags unusual charges, such as a double charge or potential fraud. Thanks to Eno’s natural language processing capabilities, Capital One customers with suspected suspicious activity on their credit or debit cards will no longer be confined to the construct of “confirm or deny” when responding to an alert. This allows Capital One to turn off cards faster and, ultimately, prevent more fraud when the moment calls for it.

Phishing has come a long way since the sketchy-looking emails from banished princes promising riches that flooded inboxes a decade ago. Today’s phishing schemes are much more complex and more convincing; phishers are even using artificial intelligence to give their schemes a more personalized edge and creating facsimile domains of highly trafficked websites with shocking skill. (We know who will be on Santa’s naughty list this year.)

Vigilance is key. Err on the side of caution with emails asking you to click a link to reset your password, as that can be a way for someone to get a hold of your login information to sensitive sites. If a fishy-looking email comes from your bank, play it safe and call the number on the back of your credit card.

Whether you’re planning the big holiday meal for your family or in charge of the gift list this year, don’t let financial fraud suddenly threaten your celebrations. Keep better tabs of your financial data this season with tools like CreditWise from Capital One. It’s like your own little holiday elf, working hard to make sure your holiday season is great.