Getting ready for safe holiday online shopping
RETAILERS ARE gearing up for the biggest shopping season of the year. With an increasing number of consumers doing their holiday shopping online, additional compute resources are being lined up to ensure that shoppers don’t experience any delays in finding what they want or in making transactions.
The holiday shopping season is also a big event for cybercriminals, with the main cybercrime activities targeting holiday shoppers and merchants being denial of service attacks, point-ofsale intrusions and web application attacks. But these are just the tip of the iceberg. An increase in charity scams, email phishing attacks, fake shopping sites, texting and SMS scams, among many more, is expected to arise throughout holiday season.
As one of the fastest growing regions in online shopping in the world, preceded only by Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, prove to be under urgent stress to adequately secure e-commerce throughout the busy holiday season. It is estimated that by 2019, 151.1 million Latin Americans will be relying on e-commerce for goods and services, generating sales of around US$85,000 million. So, in addition to checking your credit card balances and making out your shopping lists, you also need to ask how safe you are when doing your holiday shopping.
If done right, it can be a safe and convenient way to buy things – if you follow a few simple rules:
PAY ATTENTION TO WHERE YOU ARE
In just the past few weeks we learned that WPA2, the protocol used to protect data moving between your computer and wireless access points, has been broken. This means you may want to think twice about doing your online shopping using the public Wi-Fi at your local coffee shop. There are simply too many ways for someone to intercept your connection and use it to steal your credit card information, passwords and other personal data.
USE PROTECTION
Make sure your devices – whether your computer, tablet, or smartphone – are updated and patched. Providers issue regular OS updates, and many of them contain critical security patches that will protect you from known attacks and exploits. The same security concerns for laptops also apply to mobile devices.
Make sure that your connection is secure. Look at the URL bar of your browser and ensure the address starts with https:// rather than http://, meaning the transactions are protected using SSL encryption.
And please, be careful when downloading new holiday apps, especially for apps not downloaded from the official Android or Apple apps stores.
SHOP WITH KNOWN RETAILERS
Reputable online retailers depend on transaction security to stay in business. When possible, use retailers you are familiar with. Even then, however, there are risks you can manage if you take a minute to look at the web link (URL). Is this really the website of the merchant you are planning to shop from? Does it look normal and is the name spelled correctly? Does the URL end in the store’s name followed by .com, .net, or other top-level domains?
KEEP TRACK OF YOUR PURCHASES
It is critical that you keep a record of all of your online purchases, including the URL where you shopped, the item purchased, and the amount paid. I know it’s a pain. But believe me, you will be happy you did it if any of these sites turn out to be fraudulent and you need to make a claim with your bank or credit card company.
As our ability to purchase items, make online transactions and connect to others through smart devices gets easier, we need to understand that these conveniences come with risks. Cybercriminals are determined and informed on the latest trends and how to exploit them. Which is why we need to take the time to educate ourselves – and our friends and family – about shopping carefully so we can have a happy, and safe holiday shopping season.