COLORADO SPRINGS — As the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear, consumers are expected to take advantage of special deals and discounts.
Amid this excitement is the opportunity for fraudsters to pocket your hard-earned cash. Knowing how to safeguard your money is important, especially when shopping online with more than a billion websites worldwide is important.
“There’s so many ways to defraud. Criminals, they’re continually evolving and upping their game so you’re always battling technology things,” said Department Chair Of Cybersecurity And Computer Networking At Pikes Peak State College Nathan Roskop.
From e-commerce to blog sites, Roskop said his eyebrow is always raised when using the internet.
“I'm very suspicious about going to websites in general,” said Roskop. “I will usually check them out, and do a Google search on it.”
Taking these steps can help prevent you from being taken advantage of during the most generous time of the year.
1. Avoid pop-ups and advertisements
“Never click on pop-ups or advertisements,” he said. “I can go and buy a Google ad, and I get that top two or three rows and those are ads. People pay money to get their listings. One of the things that companies can do, if they’re a bad person, [they’re] going to have [their] website up for two days, have people buy stuff, and then close down shop, take the money, and run.”
2. Use a credit card or virtual credit card when making online purchases
“The debit card is directly linked to your bank account. Your credit card is not,” he said. “You can always dispute transactions with your credit card companies.” Especially if you're doing more of a riskier transaction, you may want to consider a pre-paid credit card, pay that $7 load it up, and then use a pre-paid credit card because that $7 may be worth it so they don't get access to a bank account if it's a bad website trying to defraud you out of money and not give you a product. A lot of credit card companies, they have where you can create virtual cards. You can actually create virtual credit card numbers for every single merchant that you use for online. The benefit of that is that you don't lose your whole credit card if that one transaction is a bust.
3. Do your research to make sure the website is legitimate.
“The best thing that I would recommend for consumers is to look and see the Google reviews. They’re a little harder to fake. If it’s a legitimate company, they may have a Better Business Bureau, the BBB reviews. They’re going to be reviewing that website by other customers, just like you would use Yelp or any of these other rating tools. You do have to be careful because there are fake ratings and stuff out there. But if you’re familiar with some of the new administration policies that they’re just implementing, some of those fake reviews are now illegal and against the law. Our federal government has stepped up their game in trying to protect consumers a little more in that area.”
4. Avoid unknown payment methods
“If a company has say a PayPal check out,” he said. Paypal is an e-commerce company. They do transactions electronically on behalf of the consumer. Theft also do business-to-business but from a consumer standpoint, PayPal verifies those businesses before they can set up an account. If I see a website that says check out with Stripe, a company like Shopify, Wix, I know that they’re using a multi-billion dollar company that’s well aware of the security risks and fraud transactions, so I’m going to trust that.”
5. Report any unauthorized transactions
“The Federal Trade Commission is going to be a big website that’s going to give tips for consumers for shopping online. Even the BBB, they will provide staying safe while online shopping. You can file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center. I think it is connected to the FBI and they will review those complaints. You can also call your local police or sheriff’s office and let them know. File a police report. Usually you can do it online but sometimes you might have to call it in on one of the non-emergency numbers.”
These steps aren’t foolproof, but they can help you avoid unauthorized transactions on your accounts. When in doubt, Roskop says to gauge your level of comfort by asking yourself a few questions.
“What I would encourage consumers to think about, every time they’re online, is what is your level of trust? why do you trust a company? why should you trust this website? what is that website giving you information-wise to be able to trust them?," says Roskop.
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