Hacking and identity theft make us vulnerable in shopping with a credit or debit card. Whether in a store, over the phone, or online!! So, we need to do all we can to protect ourselves. You: act secure online.
We have discussed security before. For example: Cybercrime Costs How Much? Ransomware — What Can YOU Do? Online Security. And consider this about password security:
“Do you have only one password for all accounts? Do you use only lower-case letters in your passwords? Do you enter your password when the URL begins with http (rather than https)? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you are leaving yourself wide open to identity theft and the hacking of your personal information.”
YOU: Act Secure Online
According to Sainsbury’s Bank:
“Shopping online can be fun and convenient. But are you doing all you can to keep yourself and your family safe on the Internet? Do you know how to keep your credit card secure in shopping online? Is your card registered for added security measures such as Verified by Visa, MasterCard secure, or American Express SafeKey?”
“We’ve put together 10 steps for safe online shopping below, along with how to stay safe using mobile devices and Wi-Fi. We’ve also included tips on what to do if you encounter any illegal activity.”
This post was very interesting and informative. I am someone who uses my phone for everything (including shopping and surfing the web). I don’t always check to make sure I am visiting secure websites. My parents were both victims of credit card fraud and luckily their money was refunded, but this information will be helpful if that ever happens to them or if I find myself in a situation where someone steals my identity. These are problems that are now our reality especially with all the foreign hackers.
It’s important to remain aware of the risks of shopping online. One trick that I use whenever I am interesting in shopping online is to manually type the URL of the store in the address bar, rather than clicking on a link. That way I can be more certain that the website I am at is in fact the real website and not the website of someone trying to phish me.
Cyber Security is one of the main talking points in 21st century as today the world depends a lot on internet. It has become an ‘internet driven world’ where every possible activity could be performed via web and that’s where safety comes into action. As good as it is, it has some negative points as well about the safety issues as cyber scams are not a new thing and can happen anytime. Rightly mentioned in the article that password strength is one key area which could come in healthy and having same passwords would not help the cause. I always check the url whether it has http or https as it could be a clear indicator and one could save themselves from getting cheated.Today there are apps available that could save the passwords if you want to keep a different password for different websites and that could be a safe bet. Macbook’s Safari has an inbuilt option of generating an encrypted password that it will save for you so that you don’t need to remember as it has an auto enter option.
I will admit that after reading this article, I was not as careful as I could have been while purchasing online or surfing the web. I have had one incident of identity fraud on my debit card, but luckily I was able to recover the funds. I really appreciate this article because it is something I can refer back to from now on. I had not known the security of a website was dependent on the “s” in “https”. As well, I didn’t think to download a mobile security app on to my phone, but I sure will do that now.
This post is extremely important because college students use the internet everyday and are rarely aware of the risk they put themselves in when using the internet. For example, I honestly do use the same password for several sites, but this post has made me realize I should change them. I also never knew before that having an “s” at the end of http was a security measure that can easily tell if a website is secure or not. I was also unaware that using links sent by phishing are a potential danger. This post has opened my mind to how dangerous the internet can be if we are not careful.
As someone who has very similar passwords for everything, this post was definitely a wakeup call. While password security is something I know is important and could end up hurting me severely in the future if I don’t take proper precautions now, it is something myself and I feel many others feel as though happens definitely, but not to them. It also surprised me that it is safer to pay online with credit cards compared to debit cards.