Cellphone security breaches could wreak holiday havoc: study

Ho-ho — oh!

Big retailers’ security breaches, along with mobile device carelessness, could make this a horrible holiday for some consumers.

And it could happen simply by using a cellphone to make a purchase, or responding to an unfamiliar phone number.

A new survey of 1,000 Americans with smartphones estimates that “nearly half of all calls to mobile phones are fraudulent.” The study, by First Orion, a provider of call protection services to mobile carriers, also discovered new kinds of phone fraud.

“We’re seeing a shift from quantity to quality as scammers get more sophisticated and more targeted,” warned Gavin Macomber, a First Orion senior VP.

The latest fraud is enterprise spoofing, the survey said. It happens when scammers use stolen data from data breaches to impersonate charities or businesses.

“Over 15 percent of those surveyed received a personalized call,” according to the survey. Seventy-five percent of those scammed said the criminal knew some personal information about them prior to the call.

Sometimes scammers gather information via data breaches at big retailers. For example, recently retail giant Macy’s, which has a popular Web site, admitted in a public filing that it was hit with a data breach for the second time in two years.

In a separate study by customer experience manager Sitel Group, a quarter of Americans said they’ve had personal experience “with hackers stealing their data, credit cards or financial information.”

The study warned that the majority of young people, Generation Zers, “feel very comfortable” contacting a brand via phone and are more susceptible.

Scammers are also pretending to be charity representatives from such organizations as the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and UNICEF.

Of those who received such a call, the First Orion survey found, 24 percent experienced financial loss.

Regulators are “leaning on” carriers and telecommunication companies to authenticate and verify calls on their networks, Macomber said.

And while it is important for consumers to stay vigilant about security, many aren’t.

“More than half of Americans (51 percent) admit to reusing passwords/PINs across multiple accounts (e.g., e-mail, computer log-in, phone passcode, bank accounts),” according to a survey by security management firm Shred-it.

Women are more likely to reuse passwords than men, the survey said, and Generation Zers more commonly reuse passwords than do baby boomers.