It’s during the holiday season that people take a break from their fast-paced, hectic lives. On the contrary, this is the busiest time for hackers and scammers setting up their dirty little schemes to lull even the most experienced shopper.  Veracode, provider of the independent, cloud-based application risk management platform, details these malicious attacks and how to avoid them in an infographic (see below).

“This infographic is a powerful tool to raise awareness of the multiple scams hackers employ to take advantage of consumers and web merchants for their own personal gain,” said Connie Stack, vice president of corporate marketing, Veracode. “Using common sense is always good advice, but the more sophisticated the attacker, the savvier we must become to protect our personal and credit card data.”

On Google, the search term “Cyber Monday Deals” has increased by 400 percent in the month of November. Tech, jewelry and toys are a particularly popular keyword searches that hackers follow to create fake websites that they can redirect customers to in order to snoop as much personal information.

It restates common advice for consumers and merchants: shop on trusted sites, update your virus scanner, browse only encrypted sites and use caution with public Wi-Fi.  It’s important for site owners and retailers to update system software, run security checks as well as upgrade any front end software.  Their shopping cart software, for example, or their blog or forum. Web merchants are also instructed to run a PCI scan.

Online shopping has become so popular these days, thanks to the boost in time-savings and productivity.  There’s other reasons online shopping has become appealing.  It’s a convenient alternative to in-store crowds, and buying online can often save you money. Thomas Maronick, a marketing professor at Towson University, says that while Black Friday is fun, price is still the bottom line for consumers.

“What you’re going to see is the brick and mortar folks doing price matching but they’re price matching Best Buy is price matching target or Wal-Mart but you walk in and say you price match right I can get this same item on Amazon for 50 bucks less with free shipping and they’ll say yeah we’ll match that that’s probably a year away in my judgment.” Maronick says.

With convenience, however, comes potential danger.  Here’s another article tackling the possible risks posed by mobile retail during Cyber Monday, and several ways to avoid them. Online shopping may be convenient, but it poses a great deal of hazards.