As Holiday Season and Online Shopping Surges

Security Features to Be On Look-out For

Shannan Dushane | December 1, 2016

Millions of people use e-commerce sites daily to purchase everything from aspirin to vehicles, and yet many consumers really do not care about the personal experience anymore. It is all about being convenient and working around busy lives, but what we don’t see when shopping online is there are two types of sites to be on the lookout for; you have the safe e-commerce sites and the unsafe websites all over the web and around the world. Here are a few things to watch out for while you are browsing.

People lead busy lives, much more than 10 years ago, and we dredge the job of dodging sales people or driving to the store to shop, humans seek the opportuneness of online shopping. Some of the benefits is yes you guessed it #1 Convenience of shopping; when you want, where you want, and how you want. Yes, that means if you want to buy a cake at 2am in your pajamas then you go right ahead! And the biggest benefit everyone enjoys is the instant download access and streaming features we can utilize now with e-books, videos, and more. 

Online shopping has many other benefits too.  From sending gifts, no crowds to fight off, and more variety with price comparisons on nearly every website, we have it easy these days, plus bonus rewards, we save money and earn points on gas, so we can spend more online, and most places will have free shipping with minimum orders.

The disadvantages of online shopping definitely do not out-weigh the benefits, but there are a few details to be aware of while shopping, keep your guard up about trustworthy sites is #1. The waiting for product to arrive is a disadvantage but not a huge one, when you think about how secure the transaction is and if you are protected from identity theft.  What you are looking for is the security certificate or SSL (secure socket layer) a small lock icon or badge in the website address and the possible changing of color of the address bar with the web address switching from http://www.yoursite.com - to the secure site that you are protected https://www.yoursecure.com.  This is when you can trust the site you are purchasing on, if you don’t see these features, leave the site immediately.

The same precautions go with online banking, filling out credit card offers online and any site that you have to input your social security number or billing information into, be cautious, don’t assume that every site is trustworthy or secure. The 2 minutes it takes to look for these items might save your bank account information from being in jeopardy one day.

Here are three examples of security features that you can make sure your transaction is secure and your browsing is also secure.

Google. You can see below in the url address bar the https:// is green, this is telling you that you are on a secure site and you are protected.  Not all sites and search engines do this but those who do take your business seriously.

Sears.  You can see from this website domain that there is no security here for browsing on the site. But when you look below, you will see a change.

As I enter into the cart checkout of my order it goes to https:// from http:// and it tells you that are you on a secure site for your transaction.  This is the protection that you want!

So as consumers become more dependent on online shopping here are a few things to watch out for.  

• Be perceptive when giving out your personal information, social security number or credit card information.

• Keep your password private and secure by making it hard to guess, use symbols, capitals and numbers to help in this.

• Change your passwords every 3-6 months

• Observe signs of security such as https:// (secure gateways)Email is never secure unless it is encrypted on both the sender and receivers side

Happy Shopping!