The importance of Information Security in our lives – Part 5

 

5. In our trips

While it is true that the Covid-19 pandemic stopped almost all business and leaisure trips, from the middle of 2022 travel increased in frequency although not at the same pre-pandemic levels. Due to this, we need to take additional measures to protect our data when we make online flight or hotel reservations. These measures are from the user side, company side measures where described in a previous post. These measures represent complements of the previously described measures in the ecommerce section.

5.1. Confirm that the Company to use to make reservations is a reliable Company and with a strong reputation

Due to the fact that many companies are used as front companies to obtain illegally customer data as well as payment methods (usually credit cards), we should be very careful when we select the company, some of the details to confirm are:

a. Company reputation

Search for the company’s reputatio in Google

b. SSL Certificate existence confirmation (the locker that appears to the left of the wen address

c. Use Policy and reimbursment confirmation

5.2. Never click on links that come from these companies

Before making the transaction and having comfirmed the above described points, usually is required to make a registration, it is usual to received a confirmation email to confirm the user’s identity and to finalize the registration process. After this registration process, never, and is important to emphasize it, never, make a click on links that are coming from these companies even though their reputation is confirmed. The reason is that spite of these companies are well respected in their respective business niches, it is not easy to find if they were victims of an attacked that includes data leakage, especially customer data, therefore it is advisable to confirm the marketing information included in the mail from these companies by accessing the company’s web site.