Just short info for all cybersecurity fans.
The day of the year is coming, when people kill each other in shop lines and tread on the way to dream material goods. The American craze of promotion, pointless spending of money on something that we do not need at all, but it is cheap. Willingness to possess, materialism and other wise words. It is all irrelevant. It is important to buy something. I have no problem with that. But I try not to go to extremes, do the same. I hunt for bargains and discounts on services and products that are really at a good price that day, and that I was looking them for a long time, so I know for sure, this is real discount and not just a fake label. If you are looking for a nice gift for yourself or someone close to you does not know what to buy, here are some ideas.
But before we start, in order for this article to carry something of value, I’ll throw in some Wikipedia definitions :)
Black Friday is a colloquial term for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices and often open very early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States since at least 2005.
We should also not forget about Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for e-commerce transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It was created by retailers to encourage people to shop online. The term was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation and Scott Silverman, and made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled “‘Cyber Monday’ Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year”.
Before you buy something, try to verify if the price is a real discount or just fake. Website and browser plugin like CamelCamelCamel or Keepa can help you check price history. This works for Amazon, but Amazon is a good place to check prices for general products. For services and courses or any digital goods you can always check, how the price on the website looked in the past using WayBack Machine. You can also try to find tool for specific product category using Google. For example, price history for Nintendo games are located on Deku Deals. Other similar price trackers are CheapShark, SlickDeals. Always verify price in few sources. In today’s world, unfortunately, some promotions look like this, regular price: 20 USD -> promotion price 25 USD discounted from 38 USD. This is best seen before Christmas, when the chocolates cost 100% more, despite the fact that they are on sale, and after Christmas the same sweets lose their value by 150%.
I recommend you to build a long term shopping list. I have this kind of list in my notepad. Products/Tools/Services/Certs/Exams I would like to buy in a near future, let say in upcoming 2 years. I am adding prices to the list, the same, I found the day I added new entry. From time to time I review it and see if there is a promotion or not, I add or remove things from the list. This helps to focus on the things you really want rather than buying unnecessary products. When something is left on the list for a longer time, it turns out to be completely unnecessary, I just had to give myself time to rethink. So, even when I can afford something, I add it to the list and put it off until later, to make sure that I am not emotionally buying it.
Do the same for your grocery list before going to the store, it makes a huge difference on your wallet balance. Shopping lists reduce unnecessary expenses very effectively. Ahh one more thing, never go shopping hungry ;)
After reading above we are smarter and ready. We can start looking for promotions.
In one of the article from the past, I already listed many interesting products, which will be much cheaper on Black Friday/Cyber Monday so feel free to read it -> Hacker Gadgets and hunt for discount.
I will not list here everything as someone already did a great job.
Check this amazing GitHub list -> https://github.com/0x90n/InfoSec-Black-Friday
From myself I will add only that every year around Black Friday, you can buy perpetual access to Shodan for about $5. So keep an eye on the news about this platform and look for this promotion regularly as it is probably one of the best.
Good luck, happy shopping and if you think something is missing, just add it to the GitHub repository!