With the increase in the advancement of the technology, there has been a tremendous surge in the online shopping. People are now much comfortable visiting stores virtually, choosing products they like, adding them to the cart and much more. Then, the pandemic also increased the need to shop things online. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are also very active and they are trying to scam people who are misinformed or unaware of the potential losses they can face.
Considering the risks associated with shopping online, we are going to introduce some tips that you can follow to do safe online shopping.
Carry out safe searching over the internet:
Although you can get access to all the essential products you want to purchase when you search them on the search engine, there are high risks of accidently clicking on something which is not safe you and redirects you to the malware instead of a genuine website. Malware can damage your computer badly and can also access your personal accounts and passwords. So, make sure that you are wary of what you are clicking on. You can also go with malware detection with FraudWatch
Don’t do online shopping on every device:
These days it is very common for people to have multiple devices and then use them for online shopping. Even if you have more than one device, allocate one of them for online shopping. It is very easy to maintain a clean computer by not doing excessive browsing, receiving junk or spam emails. In addition, make sure that you are visiting secure websites.
Use one email address for online shopping:
It is very common to receive lots of spam messages once you are done with lots of browsing. When you dedicate an email address for this purpose, there will be less chance for you to receive spam messages. Receiving less spam messages means having less access to malicious websites that will eventually keep you protected.
Use cash on delivery option:
Majority of us don’t know that we put our security at risk when we use credit or debit cards for online shopping. These risks are there because we accidently save the credit card number and then scammers can easily access them and use it for their purpose. The best thing to do is to choose the cash on delivery option. This way, when you place the order, you don’t provide any sensitive personal information that scammers can use to perpetrate the scam on you and use your data for malicious purpose
Use a VPN:
A VPN is a best tool to be used by all those people who are concerned about the safety of their data. VPN encrypts the data between your device and the website and prevents all the hijackers from viewing your sensitive information. The use of VPN increases the safety of the data especially when you are using public Wi-Fi when those who are connected to the Wi-Fi can put your private data at stake