Black Friday and Cyber Monday are approaching, which means there will be a ton of awesome deals online. NAU ITS is here to help you shop safely online to avoid being scammed or hacked.
Shop where you trust
- Oftentimes it’s best to stick to online shops that you know are reliable before you enter all of your personal information.
- If you are shopping somewhere new then ensure that they have an email address or customer support.
Read reviews
- Check to see how many reviews a company or product has. The bad reviews are more telling than the good ones, because companies can pay for good reviews.
- If there are little to no reviews then consider another product or shopping elsewhere to limit the chances of receiving a defective product.
Avoid public spaces
- When shopping online, avoid public Wi-Fi since it makes your personal information such as your credit card more accessible to hackers.
Use a VPN
- If you must use a public network to shop online then use a VPN to mask your IP address and increase the probability of having untraceable online actions.
Have a strong password
- When shopping virtually make sure you do not use the same password for every account. This increases the likelihood of your account being compromised.
- Use a long password that could be a sentence that is easy to memorize. For example a good password could be, “PineapplesBelongOnPizza1!”
Look for the Lock
- Before entering your credit card information to an online shop, look for the padlock icon that can be identified as a secure sockets layer (SSL), which encrypts your information. A SSL sight and be identified by the URL because the site will start with HTTPS (instead of just HTTP).
