Take care when booking a holiday

The summer hol­i­days are about to start and you would like to book your well-deserved hol­iday. Make sure that you don’t end up in a cyber trap though!

The Check Point secu­rity com­pany has pub­lished sta­tis­tics indi­cating an alarming rise in new domains related to hol­i­days or breaks. Almost 30.000 such new domains were reg­is­tered in May 2023. This cor­re­sponds to a 25% increased com­pared to the same period last year. Some 360 of these web­sites were mali­cious or sus­pect. In addi­tion, sev­eral phishing cam­paigns on this theme have been discovered.

Here some tips on how to book your hol­i­days without jeop­ar­dising your online security:

• Use trust­worthy web­sites: Only book your hol­i­days on well-known and estab­lished travel web­sites or directly via the offi­cial web­site of a hotel or air­line. Make sure the web­site is secure and makes use of an encrypted con­nec­tion (which can be iden­ti­fied from a lock symbol in the address bar).
• Check reviews and infor­ma­tion: Read reviews by other trav­ellers to ensure accom­mo­da­tions or resorts are rep­utable and trust­worthy. Pay atten­tion to booking con­di­tions, can­cel­la­tion poli­cies and any poten­tial hidden costs.
• Beware of offers which sound too good to be true: Remain scep­tical of extremely inex­pen­sive offers or unex­pected prize noti­fi­ca­tions. These could be fraud­u­lent and serve to steal your per­sonal data. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it might not just be genuine.
• Use a safe pay­ment method: When booking, use a safe pay­ment method, such as pay­ment on account.
• Remain cau­tious about sharing per­sonal infor­ma­tion: Only dis­close infor­ma­tion which is absolutely required and never share sen­si­tive data such as pass­words via unsafe chan­nels. Be wary of sus­pi­cious e-mails or phone calls asking you for per­sonal information.
• Use secure net­works: Avoid booking your hol­i­days via public Wi-Fi net­works, as these could pro­vide insuf­fi­cient secu­rity. Use a per­sonal net­work or a VPN con­nec­tion instead to pro­tect your data.
• Pro­tect your devices: Make sure your devices are well pro­tected by con­sulting our “5 steps for your dig­ital secu­rity”.