Metadata: Cyber Monday Scaremongers

Cyber Monday may not be the digital shopping extravaganza it was once purported to be. But even if consumers are spreading out their online sales, cybersecurity firm Webroot software believes the Monday after Thanksgiving will still be a special day: The company issued a warning last week that Dec. 1 is still the most likely 24 hours of the year to have your banking information stolen by cyber fraudsters.

That's been a common refrain from security researchers in years' past. And Webroot's recommendations--including updating security software and buying from trusted sites--makes sense. But just how worried should online shoppers be? (Back to main story: "Holiday E-Deals Come Early.")

Much of the hype around Cyber Monday's cyber threats is overblown, says Patrik Runald, a security researcher with software company F-Secure. To steal your banking codes while you use a site like Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) or eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), hackers would need to place hidden "keylogger" software on your computer. And F-Secure, he says, has never tracked a spike in that kind of malicious software either on Cyber Monday or even in the weeks leading up to it. This implies that hackers aren't using the opportunity to infect PCs for future fraud, either. "Cyber Monday is just another day for us," he says.

There are still reasons to shop with care. Runald warns of Cyber Monday-themed "phishing" e-mails that impersonate messages from legitimate sites and send consumers to lookalike pages designed to steal passwords, he says. Security researchers have also warned that search engines could be populated with fake pages that impersonate retailers.

But navigating directly to a known site will be as safe on Monday as it would be on any other day. In fact, while F-Secure tracks about 30,000 new samples of malicious software daily, Runald says he rarely sees noticeable bursts of new identity theft software.

"We don't really have doomsdays anymore,” he says. "We get so many new samples all the time that it's hard to see a spike on any particular day.” (Back to main story: "Holiday E-Deals Come Early.")