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How to be cyber savvy when shopping online this Christmas

At a time when the early birds start Christmas shopping, many of them online, it’s more important than ever to keep your details safe from hackers. It’s a sad fact of life that this time of year brings out the cybergrinches, who are looking to phish, spam and defraud other web users. With the right knowledge and awareness, however, you can protect yourself so they don’t spoil your Christmas. So, what should you be looking out for?

Well, the first thing to point out is that hackers aren’t looking for much. All they need are usernames and passwords to cause some serious damage, which is why you often get a lot of spam emails around this time of year. This is how cybercriminals try to harvest user credentials. You might, for example, receive an email that appears to be from a well-known site, but is actually just a convincing mock up. If it’s trying to coerce you to sign into an account in a specific way, those alarm bells should be ringing.

If you’re not sure whether something is legit or not, stay away. As the saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry. You can always contact the company or organisation directly to query the communication you’ve received if you want that peace of mind.

Another thing to be aware of is that websites might not always be quite what they seem. Sometimes, hackers will create a website that mirrors a legitimate one so it’s wise to read the URL properly for spelling mistakes - they’re easy giveaways of a copy.

Having said that, most legitimate websites will have an SSL certificate, which comes up as ‘https’ in your browser’s URL. It’s symbolised by the little padlock symbol in front of the web address. You can click on the symbol to check that this certificate is tied to a known URL, the one you are trying to access. If it’s all consistent, you can proceed, knowing that you’re heading to the right place, not into a trap.

The final piece of advice I’d give on this - and I know it’s one of those things we all hear a million times, but it’s really important - is not to reuse your password across multiple sites. If a hacker gets hold of it from one account, you can bet they will try it out on various others as well.

If you’re worried about memorising a load of different passwords, try association. A favourite website might have a logo, colour or banner that triggers a personal memory or image for you. If you build a password around that, it will jog your memory each time you log in. The standard password advice also applies, and by that I mean to try and use a phrase rather than a dictionary word, and include a mixture of upper and lower cases, numbers and punctuation.

Ultimately, staying safe while you do your Christmas shopping comes down to using common sense and following your instincts. If something doesn’t look or feel right, err on the side of caution. Nothing goes worse with your Christmas dinner than a side of online fraud!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lawrence Jones .