How to stay safe while shopping online this holiday

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When Megan Roell realized she’d been charged a few hundred dollars for a dress that was supposed to be $50, she learned a valuable lesson:

Not all shopping websites are trustworthy.

That was last year. These days, the 21-year-old is much more cautious about buying things online.

“If anything seems even just a little bit off, I don’t do it,” said Roell, a University of Cincinnati fashion design student from Batesville, Ind. “It’s not worth the risk.”

Roell’s hackles will be up this holiday season, as millions of Americans surf the ‘net to buy holiday gifts online. And for good reason: Last year, more than 70 million people were affected by a widespread data breach at Target stores that hit between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. Neiman Marcus also reported that some of its customers credit-card information may have been stolen during the 2013 shopping rush.

Sales aren’t expected to slump this season: The National Retail Federation estimates that overall sales in November and December will increase 4.1 percent over last year to $616.9 billion. The biggest surge is expected in online sales, which could increase as much as 11 percent to $105 billion, according to the federation’s Shop.org.

“More people are purchasing online than just going to brick-and-mortar stores,” Nancy Hannan, security awareness program manager with Downtown Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank, told The Enquirer. “The potential for there to be issues is greater because more people are doing it.”

A Bankrate.com survey out this week says that shopping this year won’t be reserved to Black Friday or Cyber Monday specifically because many retailers are offering deals over longer periods of time. The poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,000 U.S. adults and has an error margin of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Roell, for one, plans to check deals online Friday and Monday, but she’ll likely be shopping online until the last minute.

She heeds the consumer advocate groups that warn about cyber shopping being risky business. If she finds herself wanting to buy something on a site she’s never dealt with before, she searches the site name for online scam complaints and runs it through Scamadviser.com to see if it’s considered safe.

Not only are some sites bogus, but scammers have been known to prey upon public WiFi connections to steal sensitive banking and credit card information.

Every year, more than 16 million people report being victims of identity theft, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. That’s 7 percent of the nation’s population age 16 and older.

Holiday shopping makes people especially vulnerable, Hannan said, because targeting online shoppers is “a lot easier than walking into a bank and trying to rob it.”

“You can sit in your basement and do it in your pajamas,” she said.

Dan Marostica, vice president of fraud risk management of Western Union, said in a news release that scammers see the holiday shopping season as “an opportunity.”

“In the hustle and bustle of the holidays, con artists are counting on Americans’ desire for a good deal to help them cheat holiday shoppers out of their hard-earned money,” he said.

Online Shopping Safety 101

•Check for the ‘s’ in the URL. Before entering your bank info or credit card digits on a website, be sure the merchant’s URL begins with “https.” While this doesn’t ensure absolute safety, it’s a solid start.

•Check for, and click, a padlock icon in the status bar or address bar of the browser. When you click the icon, it should show the site address, which should match the address at the top of the page. If those addresses don’t match, beware: The site might be a fake.

•Use anti-virus software, anti-spyware and firewalls on your computer. Make sure your security software is up to date before you start shopping. (Hannan adds to also keep your operating system and other hardware up to date, because updates often fix vulnerabilities as they’re discovered.)

•Protect your login credentials. Keep your username and passwords confidential and be sure to use different passwords for every single website. If generating all those passwords is too much of a headache, consider using DashLane or a similar service to help.

•Beware of private sellers who require you to pay by money transfer or prepaid credit card. Those are scammers’ favorite ways to request payment.

•Don’t click unknown links! Sure, it’s tempting, but clicking on ads and banners can just lead to trouble. Only shop on websites for merchants you know and trust.

•Be careful when reading email. If an email looks suspicious or comes from a stranger, don’t even open it. Definitely don’t buy anything from unsolicited emails. Chances are, you won’t get the product you paid for and your identity will be jeopardized to boot.

•Don’t shop on public WiFi. It’s surely tempting when it’s free, but inputting sensitive information over public networks is akin to handing over your credit card and mother’s maiden name to a stranger. Only shop on secured connections you know and trust.

Sources: Fifth Third Bank and Western Union