Scams online happen more often than you think, 70% of businesses and people have fallen victim or will to a data breach this year. Protect yourself personally by following these 7 simple methods:
1.Update your phone security regularly
Make sure your phone security is up to date with the latest software to protect you against these harmful viruses and malware. This will help to protect you with recent hacks and other threats.
2.Use secure and trusted websites for shopping
On any website you are using you should be looking at the URL and making sure it begins with HTTPS not HTTP as HTTPS is a secure server where all of your information is encrypted so that hackers have a way harder time trying to view your personal information.
3.Using public Wi-Fi is dangerous
Whenever you are out and about make sure that you do your online shopping from your home or some form of a secure network like your cell phone companies data network. The free connections at a coffee shops and other various places are very convenient, but these public networks can be accessed by anyone so using your financial information on them is risky.
4.Make sure your passwords are strong and unique
If you ever open a new account online from somewhere you purchase merchandise form or any type of service you should be using a different password for every different account with a combination of upper and lower case letter as well as numbers.
5.Don’t store personal information
I know auto-fill is great, but it makes it very easy for anyone that gets access to your computers information to see what your passwords are and other types of personal information you have on auto-fill.
6.Only purchase with credit cards
Often time online vendors will try and get you to use some other form of payment such as a money transfer, money orders or even physically sending money. Your credit card is most likely insured for fraud, but the other types of cash transfers above are very difficult to retrieve from scammers.
7.Keep track of your statements
If you are seeing any suspicious looking charges on your credit card be sure to contact your credit card
agency immediately and let them know, you should also be keeping track of which sites you have used your credit card on.