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Summary Americans will do more than 30 percent of their holiday shopping online this year**. If you and/or your children will be among them, here are a few tips to help you make your online shopping experience safe and secure. Introduction What's the top gift wish of adults this holiday season? According to a recent poll, it's a new computer!* And where will you buy it? For many the answer is, increasingly, "online." Americans will do more than 30 percent of their holiday shopping online this year**. If you and/or your children will be among them, here are a few tips to help you make your online holiday shopping experience safe and secure.
Shop secure SSL web sites Shopping online is a great way to save time and money. You won't have to drive to the mall. You don't have to put boots and gloves on to ward off chilly weather. And you don't have to find a babysitter! You can comparison shop dozens, even thousands, of e-merchants to find the best price, free shipping, generous return policies, and discounts. And these days, shopping online is very secure, so long as you're careful. Start by shopping only with web sites or e-merchants who offer secure transactions. Some web sites are "certified secure" and display a certificate either on their homepage or at checkout. The certificate is issued by a variety of organizations including Verisign, DigiCert, and Go Daddy. What it means is that the web site offers SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security. Other web sites offering SSL security simply post the words "Secure Transaction" or "We offer Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology," often shown with a padlock icon. If your e-merchant doesn't offer SSL security, you should probably shop elsewhere. Don't get phished or pharmed Aren't sure what those terms mean? Let's get acquainted. Both phishing and pharming are techniques used by scammers to get you to part with your personal financial information, for example, your credit card number. Phishing is a scam email that appears to be from a store, bank, credit card company, or online transaction service such as Paypal. The email may ask you to take various actions -- verify your credit card information, update your password, etc. Legitimate business will not ask you to verify any personal information via an email. If you receive a phishing email, delete it.
Pharming is harder to detect. It's a fake web page created by a scammer that appears to be a checkout page on a shopping site. You click "checkout" and you're taken to the scammer's page and asked to enter your personal financial information. The best way to protect yourself against phishing and, especially, pharming is to make sure you have up-to-date Internet Security software, such as our own Norton Internet Security or Norton 360, installed on your computer. In addition, make sure you type in the store's web address in your browser, don't click on a link from an email. Shop where others shop There are so many places to buy products online, how can you find the best ones? In the real world, you might ask a friend for a recommendation. In the online world, shopper recommendations fulfill the same function. There are a number of large web sites, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, and CNET, among many others that provide search and access to multiple shopping sites. In addition to being useful for comparison shopping, each of the shopping sites is rated for customer satisfaction, and you can read individual shopper reviews for each site. You can learn whether the site delivers the right product, on time, how they handle returns, and so on.
Also, if you have favorite places to shop in the real world, shopping there online may make sense as well. Virtually every major store of any kind is also online. Credit not debit Another smart online shopping tip is this: use your credit card when you shop online, not your debit card. Why? Credit cards usually offer buyer protection against fraud, lost shipments, broken merchandise, and other problems. Check to make sure yours does. The main problem with debit cards online is the fact that a debit card is a direct line into your bank accounts. If a scammer gets your credit card number, they can cause chaos but the loss won't be catastrophic. If a scammer gets your debit card number and password, they can empty your bank account(s) of cash. And while you may eventually recover your losses due to good consumer protection laws in the U.S., you may struggle to pay bills or even your rent/mortgage while you're struggling to sort the mess out. Stick with the credit card for online shopping! Check the details There are a number of other things you should be aware of as you shop online: - Privacy Statements - check an e-merchant's privacy policy before you buy. Make sure they aren't selling your personal information to others.
- Return Policies - This can be even more important in online shopping than in the real world. The sweater may look like sea blue on the Internet and royal blue at home. Will they take it back? Is there a re-stocking fee? Find out before you buy.
- Terms of Agreement - If a purchase involves an online transaction service, such as Paypal, make sure you understand how that service will protect you if things go wrong.
- Gift Cards - these are increasingly popular gifts to send and receive and can be a big help with last minute shopping. Make sure you review the policies for each card. Some companies actually have monthly fees or expiration dates on their gift cards, which can make them nearly useless to your gift recipient if they don't use them right away.
Report Problems If you have problems with an e-merchant, call the Federal Trade Commission's toll free hotline at 877-382-4357 or visit its web site at http://www.ftc.gov/ to fill out a complaint form. You can also report Internet fraud or other problems at the Internet Complaint Center at http://www.ic3.gov/.
Children and online shopping Most kids are so confident online that they think they know everything. Rest assured, the scammers know more. If you let your children shop online, also let your common sense prevail. Teens should be given guidelines about how much to spend and where to spend it. It would also be a good idea to make sure they read this article before they start shopping. With younger children, an adult should directly supervise online shopping.
Happy Holidays and safe shopping As we said earlier, shopping online is easier, takes less time and, often, takes less money than traditional offline shopping. This holiday season hundreds of millions of people will spend tens of billions online. We hope, that if you're one of them, that what you've learned here will make your online shopping experience more secure and satisfying, and your holidays even happier.
* Consumer Electronics Association, 14th Annual CE Holiday Purchase Patterns, Oct. 2007
**National Retail Federation, "2007 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey" Tags: Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, Free Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 Download, internet security, antivirus software, antispyware software, personal firewall, antispam
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