Shopping safely online
Today and tomorrow are really busy days for online shoppers ordering a present for a loved one, hoping that the gift can be delivered before Christmas. Many people will be eager to place orders, and perhaps you might be one of these. But, however in a hurry you are, don’t rush placing your order. Spend a few seconds more just checking that you are not being duped by a phoney website, or some other cyber-scam.
If you receive emails containing ‘Christmas offers’ or bargains in the pre-Christmas sales, just be a little cautious that these are actually genuine e-mails and not ‘Phishing’ emails. These look legit, but the links within them could take you to a sophisticated phoney website, where you may place an order, your payment is taken, but you will sadly not receive any of the goods. My advice is to never follow links in emails, instead go to the retailer’s website and search for the products directly in their website, so that you know you are buying them for sure.
Your credit cards details should only be entered into a website where the address bar of your browser shows a small padlock icon. Click on this icon to see what the security report says. For example, placing an order on the Argos website, and pressing the padlock icon shows ‘Baltimore CyberTrust Root has identified this site as: www.argos.co.uk. The connection to the server is encrypted.’ This means that information such as your credit card details entered into forms within this web address are encrypted, so no-one else can intercept your card details.
The old adage is that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Have a cyber-safe Christmas, and don’t forget to put pin numbers and passwords on all those shiny new tech-devices.
