‘Tis the Season to Shop Online

It does not come soon enough, this holy holiday, when depression rates soar and stress doubles during a a few months in the winter; yes, Christmas is here!

We all know shopping is done and the gifts are bought for our kids, friends, and loved ones, but this year it seems everyone is going online to shop. This brings up new threats to your security and new ways for those pesky thieves to get your money. Here are ways to protect against them and make sure the season is as jolly as it should be.

If you have kept on the blogs at Computer Geeks, you are one step above everyone who has not, because you know about phishing attacks. These are fake websites that grab your info without you even knowing it, usually by clicking on a link that goes to a website set-up by a hacker. During the holiday season, these attacks increase ten fold because people are ignorant to phishing, thus making it easy to hack into your credit or debit card information as they surf and shop. Be careful, be aware, check the URL that loads from a link on website or email-make sure it matches what the address bar says.

While you are looking for the coolest toy or newest video game that your kid just has to have, before you fill out the form of payment with your credit card information, check the website for signs that verify that it is secure. First look at the address bar, look at the beginning of the address: if it has HTTPS you are good. Also look on the bottom of your browser, it usually has a locked padlock to show that it is secure. Most big sites like?Amazon, EB Games, and Best Buy?actually have certificates of security on their sites.

Here is a good one, forget using debit cards unless you are okay with putting information such as access to your bank account. Use credit cards.

There are certain security questions that a site might ask you, like where you have previously lived, answer them. These are designed to make sure you are who you say your are.

Attacks happen all the time on the internet, you may think it won’t happen to you, until it happens and ‘what are you gonna do’ is all you can say. Don’t be that schmuck, take action. Arm yourself with sufficient facts that will keep you safe this holiday season. When you are spending all that money on things that will probably become trash in a couple years, remember that there are people out there with the means and the will to access your information. But they cannot if you know what to look for.

That is our goal, my goal in this blog, to educate the masses of people out there of the risks posed by the internet. It is a scary world today, and today’s world is online, so what are you doing to protect yourself?

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