The Federal Trade Commission received more than 2.1 million fraud reports from consumers in 2020. The frauds amounted to more than $3.3 billion of which $1.2 billion were attributed to imposter scams, while online shopping accounted for $246 million in losses.

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for victims but their activities pick up during the holiday season when people shop online for gifts. Online frauds and scams keep getting more sophisticated and voluminous every year, requiring us to be ever-vigilant, especially during the holiday season when online shopping, vacations, and trips make things difficult to manage.

In this blog post, we share with you tips to help you stay safe while shopping online.  

7 Tips For Safe Online Shopping

Here are seven top tips for safe online shopping:

1. Use Trusted Browser Extensions To Protect Your Information

The first thing regarding online safety that we should all remember is that privacy, data security, and cybersecurity are closely linked. Your username-password combinations, answers to security questions, and secret pin codes very likely have some association with your personal information such as the name of loved ones, pets, year of graduation, etc. This is common knowledge among cybercriminals and that’s the reason why they come after your data before launching attacks on you.

Cybercriminals use social engineering to manipulate individuals into performing actions or disclosing confidential, sensitive, or personal information. The information collected is then used to launch targeted phishing scams, hacking, password attacks, etc. So, if you are able to keep your personal information safe, you will be able to ward off much of the online scams, frauds, and targeted spear-phishing attacks.

Thankfully keeping your information safe while you use the world wide web is easy. You can install a few browser extensions on Chrome or whichever browser you use and those extensions will do the trick. If you are interested in learning which browser extensions you need to install, you can find them in our blog post 5 Simple Tools That Protect Your Online Privacy.

2. Enable Two-Factor Authentication On Your Email Account

As we mentioned above, your username-password combinations, which are more often than not associated with your personal information, aren’t a good way to protect your online accounts. Using multi-factor authentication such as two-factor authentication (2FA) is a must for protecting our accounts from unauthorized access.

2FA is effective, easy to implement, and makes it extremely difficult for hackers to gain access to your accounts. What more reasons do you need to start using 2fA?

3. Set Up "Push" Rather Than "Pull" Payments

One of the ways you can protect your banking information while shopping online is by using third-party payment vendors such as Venmo, Paypal, Google Pay, Amazon pay, etc. These payment vendors are effective in protecting your information because even if the service is compromised, only the transaction will be affected, not your bank account or credit card.

When you use such third-party vendors for making payments online, the payment is “pushed’ to the merchant instead of the merchant pulling it from your account. This prevents the merchant from getting access to your credit or debit cards, and account information. This gives you greater control over your online payments and with whom you share your financial information and more importantly, it protects you from fraudulent transactions.

Additionally, certain fintech companies and digital banks allow you to instantly create digital cards, which you can use for online purchases and can be easily disposed of if you suspect any fraud.

4. Do Not Use Public Wi-Fi For Shopping

Public Wi-Fi networks are dangerous and you should avoid connecting to them. Most of the free Wi-Fi networks, while convenient, have little to no security and potential hackers can easily snoop in on your online activities once you are connected. We are not scaremongering, here’s a video that shows the dangers of public Wi-Fi.

If you must use public Wi-Fi, always do so with a virtual private network (VPN) connection. VPN uses advanced encryption and authentication protocols to prevent unauthorized access and snooping on your connection.

5. Beware Of Smishing

Smishing is a type of phishing in which attackers use text messages to trick targeted recipients into clicking a link or sharing information. While most people have wised up to simple phishing attacks, smishing often flies under the radar. Smartphones usually don’t have the same level of security that desktops and laptop computers have.

Smishing attacks can be especially effective when we are expecting deliveries or updates about packages via SMS. Text messages sent from spoofed numbers can easily mislead us into believing that they are genuine. So be vigilant and think twice before clicking on links in text messages.

6. Be Extra Careful With Your Inbox

The holiday season is a perfect time for cybercriminals because they know that we are all busy. We are busy finishing projects, closing sales, hitting targets, and more importantly buying gifts online before switching off for the holidays. The cybercriminals count on you being too preoccupied to notice the scams and that’s why the holiday season is when they are most likely to target you.

So, beware of seasonal scams, fake package tracking emails, charity donation scams, fake gift cards, etc. Never give out your personal information via email or SMS and always hover your mouse pointer over the URL in your email to verify the real destination. Beware of emails with pictures, as they may contain malware. And never click on links or respond to emails received from unknown accounts.

7. If It Looks Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is

If an offer appears too good to be true, it most likely is. Your inbox is probably full of attractive and unbelievable offers that promise to give away iPhones, lottery prizes, and much more. An overwhelming majority of such offers are scams. The attractive offers are simply lures that draw your attention and once you click on the malicious link or respond to the email, the criminals use their big bag of tricks to try and defraud you out of your hard-earned money.

Conclusion

While we are busy closing out the year as well as shopping online to mark the festive spirit, it is easy to fall victim to one of the many traps waiting for us online. During the holiday season, we receive a lot of communication- holiday messages, sales messages, offers, newsletters, etc. Cybercriminals try to use this volume to their advantage. And although we may be quite security-conscious, we all make mistakes.

So let’s keep our spirit of giving limited to our loved ones and those in need. Let’s not give away our personal data and financial information to cybercriminals. While you shop online, always keep in mind the cautionary measures that we have shared above. Happy Holidays and safe shopping!

Are you worried about cybersecurity at your workplace? Have you been receiving phishing, spam, fraud, and scam emails? Are you worried someone may click on a malicious link and cause a security breach? Reach out to us by clicking the button below and we will help upgrade your security systems and keep you safe and secure while you work.

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