Technologies

Attention Last-Minute Holiday Shoppers: Scammers Are Coming for You

Experts say procrastinators need to be wary of last-minute Christmas-shopping deals.

Better ho, ho hold up before jumping on that seemingly great deal on that must-have holiday gift. Scammers are looking to take advantage of procrastinators still trying to finish their Christmas shopping.

With Christmas just days away, experts say last-minute shoppers need to be especially wary of deals that look too good to be true, because they most likely are. Cybercriminal attempts to steal the money and personal information of consumers have spiked in recent weeks and aren’t going to stop anytime soon.

What’s more, as gift giving draws closer, increasingly desperate shoppers will be more apt to click on links they shouldn’t and shop at sites that they otherwise might think are a little questionable.

Shoppers need to be aware that they’re being targeted with an epic amount of phishing and other kinds of online scams right now, said Kurt Baumgartner, a principal security researcher for the cybersecurity company Kaspersky.

«For the crooks that are behind this stuff, It’s a numbers game and they’re willing to put a lot more behind these efforts,» Baumgartner said.

The volume of Christmas-themed spam has increased consistently since Nov. 27, with big spikes in the emails spotted between Dec. 6 and Dec 9, according to researchers at the cybersecurity company Bitdefender.

The emails covered the usual holiday topics, including product giveaways, fake surveys and discounts on designer goods, along with non-shopping related offers geared toward the lonely including online-dating pitches and access to premium adult content.

Scammers impersonated brands such as Dollar General, Netflix and Lowes, hoping to entice consumers to hand over their personal or financial information in exchange for bogus gift cards, Bitdefender said.

In addition to seemingly never-ending streams of phishing emails, scammers are also reaching consumers through text messages, a practice known as «smishing,» as well as ads posted on social media. Those kinds of attacks have a better chance of getting past typical consumer antivirus software, which screens emails for phishing and spam.

The attacks themselves aren’t a new invention. Phishing in all of its forms is a year-round plague. What’s different during the holidays is that people are in a rush and less apt to think before they click, Baumgartner said.

About 12% of Americans polled for a Kaspersky study done before the start of the holiday season said they planned to do the bulk of their shopping during the last nine days before Christmas.

Of those expected last-minute shoppers, 40% admitted they’d be willing to shop on a site that struck them as sketchy, if the offer was enticing enough.

Baumgartner said that given the potential risks, those numbers are «alarming.» That said, there are some easy ways for last-minute shoppers to protect themselves.

Here are some tips from Baumgartner and others for warding off the cyber Crampus as you finish your holiday shopping.

Tips for safe last-minute online shopping

If a deal looks too good to be true … Yep, it probably is. Stop and think. Ask yourself if the deal you’re considering would look realistic in January, after the Christmas rush has passed.

Use good AV and a password manager. Security software will screen out a lot of unsolicited email and help protect you from known malware if you accidentally download it. A password manager won’t autofill your critical usernames and passwords if it thinks you’re on a site that they’re not intended for.

Always use a credit rather than debit card. If you get scammed, credit card companies are usually great about making you whole,ASAP. And it’s a lot less traumatizing to deal with that rather than an empty bank account.

Don’t buy gift cards online. When it gets down to crunch time, gift cards are better than nothing, but resist the temptation to buy one online from a third-party site. Instead, head to a brick and mortar retailer like a drug store. When you pick out your card, make sure it hasn’t been tampered with.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #707

Hints and answers for Connections for May 18, #707.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle is a mix of difficult and easy. The purple category does what most purple categories do, and makes you really break down how you think about the words. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: School days.

Green group hint: About there!

Blue group hint: Sure, let’s go.

Purple group hint: The Scarlett Letter.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Tasks for a student.

Green group: Encouraging responses in a guessing game.

Blue group: Up for anything.

Purple group: What «A» might mean.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is tasks for a student. The four answers are assignment, drill, exercise and lesson.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is encouraging responses in a guessing game. The four answers are almost, close, not quite and warm.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is up for anything. The four answers are easy, flexible, game and open.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is what «A» might mean. The four answers are area, athletic, excellent and one.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #441

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 441 for May 18.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands will probably be easier if you have some basic knowledge about a certain type of vessel. You don’t really need to have ever been on one, since the answers show up in books and movies all the time. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Riding the wind.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: famed song by Christopher Cross.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DULL, TILE, TILER, SEER, GALE, GALES, HAIL, SAIL, LEEK, GLUE, HALL, TALL, HEAT

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you’ve got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

HELM, HULL, KEEL, MAST, STERN, RIGGING, RUDDER, TILLER

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is SAILBOAT. To find it, start with the S that’s four letters down on the farthest row to the left, then wind across, up and down.

Technologies

Google I/O 2025: How to Watch and What to Expect

With Android 16 out of the way, Google I/O will certainly be all about AI.

Google I/O 2025 takes place on May 20 and 21 with Google’s big keynote happening on day 1. We expect Big G to talk about its myriad innovations across its ever-expanding portfolio of products — almost certainly with a huge focus on AI every step of the way. If we collectively cross our fingers, promise to be good and eat all our vegetables then we may even be treated to a sneak peek at upcoming hardware.

Read more: Android 16: Everything Google Announced at the Android Show

Google also hosted a totally separate event that focused solely on Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition saw the wrappers come off Android 16, with insights into the new Material 3 Expressive interface, updates to security and a focus on Gemini and how it’ll work on a variety of other devices.

By breaking out Android news into its own virtual event, Google frees itself to spend more time during the I/O keynote to talk about Gemini, Deep Mind, Android XR and Project Astra. It’s going to be a jam-packed event, so here’s how you can watch I/O 2025 as it happens and what you can look forward to.

Google I/O: Where to watch

Google I/O proper kicks off with a keynote taking place on May 20, 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. BST). It’ll almost certainly be available to stream online on Google’s own YouTube channel, although a holding video is yet to be available. There’s no live link on the I/O website yet, either, though you can use the handy links to add the event to your calendar of choice. Expect links to a livestream to be available closer to the day.

What to expect from Google I/O 2025

Little chat about Android 16: As Google gave Android 16 its own outing already, it’s likely that it won’t be mentioned all that much during I/O. In fact at last year’s event, Android was barely mentioned, while uses of the term «AI» went well over a hundred.

Android XR: Google didn’t talk much about Android XR during the Android show, focusing instead on the purely phone-based updates to the platform. We expected to hear more about the company’s latest foray into mixed-reality headsets in partnership with Samsung and its Project Moohan headset, so it’s possible that this is being saved for I/O proper.

Gemini: With Android being spun out into its own separate event, Google is evidently clearing the way for I/O to focus on everything else the company does. AI will continue to dominate the conversation at I/O, just as it did last year (though hopefully Google can make it more understandable) with updates to many of its AI platforms expected to be announced.

Gemini is expected to receive a variety of update announcements, including more information on its latest 2.5 Pro update which boasts various improvements to its reasoning abilities, and in particular to its helpfulness for coding applications. Expect lots of mentions of Google’s other AI-based products, too, including DeepMind, LearnLM and Project Astra. Let’s just hope Google has figured out how to make this information make any kind of sense.

Beyond AI, Google may talk about updates to its other products including GMail, Chrome and the Play Store, although whether these updates are big enough to be discussed during the keynote rather than as part of the developer-focused sessions following I/O’s opening remains to be seen.