Millennium Magazine_6th Ed

Five Tips for Safer Though the benefits of shopping online are without doubt, there are also some serious dangers of which to remain aware. Fortunately, most of these threats are easily avoidable, provided you practice good browsing habits and learn how to identify some of the more obvious online scams. By following a few basic guidelines, you will be in a better position to shop in confidence and safety. 1. Use Familiar Websites Virtually all major high-street retailers have online stores, which are perfectly safe to use, provided you make sure you are on the right website. However, with smaller e-commerce stores, you will need to be a little more careful by carrying out a bit of research before you start providing your payment details. In particular, ensure that the store uses a recognized and respected payment system, such as PayPal. With PayPal, for example, you do not actually need to provide any payment details to the store itself, as PayPal handles everything. 2. Use Strong Passwords You should have unique, strong passwords for all of your online accounts, instead of using the same password for everything as many people make the mistake of doing. Just as importantly, you need to ensure that your password is practically impossible to discover. A strong password should be at least 10 characters long and use a mixture of letters, numbers and special characters. Avoid using common words that can easily be cracked using a dictionary. You should also have different passwords for every online account you have, and get into the habit of changing the more important ones every few months. 3. Check the Website’s Security Credentials Whenever you are shopping online or visiting any website that asks for login information, payment details or any other personal or financial data, you should ensure that the website you are on is secure. While your browser should warn you if a website that should be secure is not secure, you should also look out for the lock symbol yourself. If the website is secured using the transport layer security (TLS) protocol, you should see a small lock symbol next to the address or in a bar at the bottom of the window, depending on your browser. You should also make sure you are using the latest version of your preferred browser. 4. Avoid Using Public Computers Using public terminals for anything such as online shopping or banking is just asking for trouble. However, many people make this mistake, thinking that logging out afterwards is safe enough. Nonetheless, you will have no idea whether or not there is any malicious software installed on the computer, and it is easy to forget to log out as well. While using public computers is fine for comparison shopping, you should never use them for actually making purchases or doing anything else that involves entering password or payment information. If, for example, there is a keylogger installed on the computer, your private or financial information will end up being compromised. The same applies when you are using a laptop or any other portable device connected to the Web through a public WiFi connection. 5. Be Wary of Phishing Scams Unfortunately, phishing scams are on the rise, and it is extremely easy to encounter them, though most of them are quite obvious. A phishing scam may come in the form of an email or website purporting to be from a legitimate company. They are designed to collect information from unwitting users who think they are dealing with a real company. When shopping online, you are most likely to encounter phishing scams if you enter a Web address incorrectly. Scammers often use misspelled versions of websites or different domain extensions to capture information that people would otherwise only give to the genuine version of the website. If you receive a phishing email, it will probably ask you to provide login or financial information, despite the fact that no legitimate company would ever do this.