During the holiday season shoppers everywhere need to be especially wary of potential scams that arise at this time of year.
An article from Engage Customer gives out some holiday scamming statistics:
- 1/8th of customers would give up their passwords for discounts when shopping online
- 14% of online shoppers admit to sharing their passwords with friends and family, of which half of them save the passwords in their local browser
- Half claim that they reuse passwords for different shopping sites, which allows easier access for scammers to intrude on personal information
- 83% of online shoppers say they only sometimes or never check privacy policies and security conditions
- 1/5th never check for SSL certificates or “green locked sites”
To be safe, use different and distinctive passwords when putting personal information online, such as credit cards, addresses, and social security numbers. Do not give out your passwords to anyone, even if it is a close family member. Even if they do not give it out, one cannot be certain that they won’t fall prey to an online scammer. Only use trusted, big name internet retailers, and make sure they are secure and have acceptable privacy policies.
Besides these big topics, there are several popular scams to watch out for, which can be read about in an article posted by McAfee here.
Source: CU*Secure