The winter holidays are the biggest online shopping season each year. NetElixir has estimated seasonal revenue for 2018 will grow 15 percent year-over-year, to $97 billion. The combination of gift-giving and steep discounts reliably drives huge activity every November and December, which is both a boost to the economy and, on the downside, a unique […]

To minimize the potential damage of an attacker gaining access to your credit card information, consider opening a credit card account for use only online. Keep a minimum credit line on the account to limit the amount of charges a possible attacker can accumulate.

Credit cards are the safest way to pay for online purchases because you can dispute the charges if you never get the goods or services or if the offer was misrepresented. Federal law limits your liability to $50 if someone makes unauthorized charges to your account, and most credit card issuers will remove them completely […]

Avoid online shopping, banking, and sensitive work that requires passwords or credit card information while using public Wi-Fi. And only use sites that begin with “https://” when online shopping or banking.

E-commerce sites are typically well-protected from attacks. However, you can further reduce your risk by paying with credit, or with a gift/prepaid card, instead of debit. That way, you have more protections from identity theft and no prospect of your bank account being cleaned out if your card number is stolen.

HTTPS encrypts the data you exchange with websites that use it. In contrast, HTTP sends that same information in plain text. Look for a padlock in the URL bar of your browser to verify HTTPS. Never perform sensitive transactions such as e-commerce purchases over HTTP. Use the HTTPS Everywhere Tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation […]