How to protect yourself from online shopping scams this holiday season

As holiday shopping kicks off with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, online scams are rising. So how do you protect yourself during this busy holiday shopping season?

Let's bring in our next guest, known to over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram as Cyber Security Girl. Please welcome Caitlin Sterling.

Hi, everyone.

Good to see you.

You too.

We have all the questions today. So there's a lot of scams, lots of fake websites out there. How do you know which ones are real?

Yes.

I have an acronym for you to make it a little bit easier. So we want a safe website, right? So safe is the acronym. S stands for secure. So when you're actually looking at the URL, you want to look for HTTPs. The S actually means secure. So that means it's a secure website, which is a great start. Then you want to analyze the URL. So once you look at the HTTPs, look at the whole website address and see if there's anything that looks a little funky, like if it's a dot net instead of a dot com, or if there's a zero instead of an O, just see if there's anything off. Then I want you to. The F stands for find reviews. So search for reviews online, whatever website you're looking at, look at their website name and then review and then see what comes up. And then the last thing is to evaluate the content of the website. If it's a scam, a lot of times it's pixelated images, the grammar's off, there's spelling mistakes, and a lot of the FBI actually looks for details. So look at the contact address and see if it's like actual real address or if it's just fake. So a lot of the details are off as well. And overall, I would say if you're already doing this process, probably trust your gut. And it's probably, probably a scam of a website anyways. But yeah.

You also say no to debit cards when purchasing items online? Why?

Yes. So credit cards are a lot easier to get your money back if you dealt with fraud or identity theft. And also when you're using a credit card online or a debit card online and you're on an unsecured network, if hackers get a hold of your debit card, it's like them finding cash on the ground. Right? They just. It's a free for all. You're most likely not going to get any of your cash back. But with credit cards, you can actually file and say it was a fraud or ID theft. And usually they're pretty good about getting your money back. On top of that, you're going to be a good citizen. Because if you're part of a larger fraud or scam, you're actually helping, you know, investigators figure out who it is and get more money back for other people.

The other thing you say is be aware of how you're getting online to do these shopping to protect your data. How do you know if your Internet connection is secure?

Yeah. So basically, if you're ever using public Internet and has no password, that is unsecure Internet. So anytime you go to coffee shops or airports, you want to make sure that you're either connecting with your personal hotspot that actually has a password if you're going to be online shopping or using a vpn. So what happens when you're on public WI fi is it's a free for all. It's literally public. So if a hacker is in your area, they can see everything you're doing. They can see the username you're putting in, the passwords you're putting in, your credit card details you're putting in. But if you have a password, they're obviously not able to get in. And if you use a vpn, which is a virtual private network, it's literally how it sounds. You're making your network private on that public wifi. So it's all encrypted and they won't be able to get in. If they get in, they'll just see a bunch of random letters and numbers.

What about your cell phone? Because I shop a lot from the pool, right?

Yes. Well, if your phone is connected to a public WI fi, then I would not shop on your phone. But if, if you're just on your local network, it's fine. Just don't connect to a public WI fi and be shopping on your phone.

Talk about adding an extra layer of security, especially when it comes to those. Multi factor authentication.

Yes. So you want multi factor authentication. It means you're authenticating you are who you say you are to whatever website you're you're going to. But the first factor is actually your username and password. That is standard. We all have that, but we all kind of. You reuse the same passwords. I mean, we're human. No one has unique passwords. We like to say have strong unique passwords for every account.

But it's hard to remember, though.

It's hard to remember and it's not realistic for a lot of people. I'm going to be honest with you. So because of that, you want to turn on two ways of authenticating yourself. So on top of your username and password, you also want to have a second way, which can be a one time code sent to your phone or your email address. You can use biometrics, which is like a face scan or a fingerprint. But you can also have have an authenticator app, which is an app that you download and it will give you a code that you can type in. So if you have a password and you have a second layer of multi factor authentication, you're actually preventing 95% of the scams because it's a lot harder for hackers to get you. So it's very basic stuff, but it's super, super helpful, especially when it comes to online shopping.

And real quick, do you like the codes better than the questions? Because we get to what was your first car in high school?

I love the codes, especially if you use an authenticator app. So what happens right now is there's a lot of SIM swapping, which means that people are able to pretend that your phone number. So if there's SIM swapping, then they actually get the code to their phone as well. So we like to say use an authenticator app if possible, but we don't need to make things complicated. As long as you have two factor authentication, password and a code or password, and you know, a biometric, you're more than ready.

The SIM card just scared me. All right, Kayla, we don't need to.

Talk about SIM card. Let's not be scary.

Thank you. We appreciate it for him.