Mon, November 30, 2009
CyberMonday Tips For Safe Shopping Online
As the Christmas shopping season approaches, it’s a good idea to do what you can to reduce your risk of identity fraud when you shop online.
Here are my top five suggestions for reducing the chances of being taken by a CyberGrinch:
Keep Your Antivirus Hardware Updated
This is a basic requirement, even if you don’t do much online shopping. If you need security software, take a look at the software reviews at cnet.com to get some ideas. Once you have security software installed, keep it updated to stay protected against new threats.
Stay Out of Bad Neighborhoods
There are countless great small vendors online, but if you’ve never heard of an online retailer, do a little checking to make sure it’s legitimate. Some web security packages have features that will flag questionable sites within your search results.
If you get an e-mail from an online retailer, don’t automatically clink the link in its message. Typing the address into your browser window or using a bookmark gives you a margin of safety over clicking an e-mail link, which can be altered to misdirect you to a fraudulent web site. Although there are a lot of poorly-written fake e-mails out there, the quality of some of the fraudulent e-mails is improving; don’t assume that you can always detect a phony e-mail.
Check Out the Vendor’s Policies
A good web site should make it easy for you to find the retailer’s policies on returns, refunds, privacy, and the like. Can you return merchandise and get a refund, or are there circumstances under which you can only get a credit for buying other merchandise? It pays to find these things out before you buy anything.
Use Online Credit Card Security Features
Several credit cards now allow you to generate a special credit card number, different from the number on your card, to use for an online transaction. The advantage of this is that if your number is stolen, your actual card number isn’t compromised. Also, since the number is specific to a transaction or vendor, it’s much easier for the card company to determine where the theft occurred. Using a credit card gives you consumer protections if there are problems with the merchandise.
Keep Your Transaction Records
Errors can happen; it makes sense to print records of your online transactions. If there’s a problem with the transaction, or in the unlikely case of fraud, you’ll be better off if you have a record.