Safe Online Christmas Shopping: don’t let the hacking Grinch steal your Xmas joy.
Do you hate crowded stores and malls? I prefer online shopping. But how do you stay safe?
Safe Online Christmas Shopping
Here’s tips on how to safe this online shopping season.
1. Check for the padlock in the website address bar. See below. The padlock means some effort has been made to encrypt the transaction.
2. When you create an account on a shopping website, don’t use the same password as your other web accounts, particularly your social media accounts. As the great LinkedIn hack from 2014 proved, once hackers have your email and password from one account, they immediately try it out on your other accounts.
Make sure the password is reasonably complex: start with numbers, a capitalized word/phrase and add some punctuation.
Or use a password manager like LastPass.
3. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Do price research first before clicking that buy button. Remember some sites are posting in American dollars.
4. Watch out for fake shoppings apps. ‘Tis the season for fake shopping apps on UGoogle Play and the Apple App store. Hackers have added fake apps to their phishing emails with great deals.
5. Avoid online shopping on public wifi. Unless you’re using an encrypted VPN, anyone with the right software can decipher the details of your shopping.
Don’t let the hacking Grinches ruin your Christmas.
