Careful online shopping (a repost)

My obligations require me to re-post a prior article today. This is the week where many of you will be doing last-minute holiday gift buying, and many of you will doing that on the Internet. This article discusses tips for safe online purchasing. Originally titled Let’s be careful out there, it appeared 12/1–

It appears that we’ve reached a point where more people are doing their gift-buying online than at the mall.  It’s a fact: there are more reasons to do your shopping online this year than there were before ($3½-per-gallon reasons). And, shopping on the Internet has been around for a while now… it is no longer a new, and frightening development. At this point in history (long after the “dot com bust”) most of us have made at least one purchase from the Web — whether it was an airline ticket, a hotel room, a book or video, or a membership in a club or society.
We have “been there”. We have “done that”. We’ve “got the t-shirt”. It’s old hat.

But just because e-commerce has matured, and because we have made prior purchases without getting burned, doesn’t mean we need to let down our guard.. or assume that all the bugs are ironed out.. or think that all the frauds and huckster are so amateurish as to be easily recognized (like the guy selling TVs out of the trunk of his car is easily recognized). No! Be not lulled! Be not complacent!
Let’s, Dear Holiday Shopper, be careful out there!

It is likely that you have read, or heard, warnings about safe Internet shopping (and, I have written such advice here in prior articles) before; but, let’s review the basics:
1) Never enter personal information — much less your credit card number — on a webpage that is not showing two things: a gold lock icon in the address bar of your browser, and the “s” in the https:// beginning of the website URL.
To review my article on this topic, click here.

1A) There a sub-advisory here: click on the gold lock icon– if your browser tells you that there is a “problem” with this website’s “certificate”…

..such as shown above, it does not necessarily mean this is a fraudulent website BUT do not make a purchase here. Err on the side of caution and move on to a different vendor.

2) Hopefully “phishing” is not an unfamiliar term to you, but have you heard of “pharming“? Frequently, this is a ‘look-alike’ website. The idea is to get you to enter your pertinent information, and clearly you want to avoid these pure-fraud website’s whenever possible. To do so, never click on links to websites you recieve in an email. Enter the URL manually into your browser’s address bar (or Copy>Paste it).
Also, when you’re shopping online, turn on your browser’s phishing filter, or do a “spot check”. In IE7, click on the “Tools” button, click on “Phishing Filter”, and then “Check this Website”.

Another very good website checker is McAfee’s Site Advisor. Here you can enter the URL for the website and get a report of the site’s ‘rating’, or you can download a browser “plug in” which will provide an automated Rating indicator.

Well, I’m out of time for today. Shopping on the Internet can be a great time and money saver. Have a good weekend and, please, be careful out there.

Copyright © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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