Shopping online? Here are some ways to buy safely for Cyber Monday 2021 deals
With shopping for holiday gifts online becoming more and more popular, so is the potential for thieves and scammers to horn in and ruin the experience.
Ouachita Parish Sheriff Jay Russell cautions citizens about the importance of safely shopping online during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
"While the Internet has made shopping more convenient than ever, along with that convenience comes a greater need for consumers to become aware of how to protective themselves while shopping online," Russell said.
The Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office offers these preventive measure for shopping securely online:
Use a single credit card and choose credit over debit. This may seem like unconventional advice, but credit cards offer protection from identity theft that debit cards don't. There is a greater risk in using a debit card because should someone gain access to your banking account, they could clean it out before you even learn there's a problem.
Disposable is better. Even better than using a credit card is to use a disposable credit card. Disposable credit cards work just like most gift cards. You add a specified dollar amount to the card, and it's good until that is gone. Once it's gone, you can add more, or purchase a new one. And both Visa and American Express now offer these cards in varying amounts so they are easy to get hold of. The bonus is that if the number from a disposable credit card is stolen, it's anonymous, and criminal can't gain access to anything more than the dollar amount that's still available on the card.
More: Local law-enforcement officials offer holiday shopping safety tips
Keep your antivirus software on computer and mobile devices up to date. Doing so may help you to avoid nonsecure websites and pop-up phishing scams. Keep watch for these scams. Look out for unsolicited emails or texts with hyperlinks claiming you have a free gift for you or there is a problem with a delivery.
Verify web site security. Be sure you are shopping on a secure website. If the site you are shopping from is not secure, criminals can capture everything that you enter onto a form from those sites, including personal and credit and information. Secure sites began with HTTPS://instead of HTTP://. Secure sites will also have small lock icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
Don't shop publicly. If you plan do any shopping online, do it at home. If you're using a public computer— at the library, you have no control over who else might be using that computer. Shop at home, it's much safer.
Don't store information elsewhere. Many major shopping sites offer you the ability to save your credit card information on their servers to speed the shopping process. Although this might make online shopping more convenient in the future, it is risky to maintain your personal information elsewhere. If the company you're shopping with has a data breach, your personal information could be compromised.
Be wary of unusually low prices. When searching for the best price online, similar items typically fall into a general price range. If one falls way below that range, be suspicious. Scammers use ridiculously low prices to lure consumers to their ads. If the deal seems to good idea to look for the company's phone number and street address to make sure there is a way to get hold of them offline.
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Read the fine print. Always look for a merchant's return policy and study the fine print. Keep in mind that most likely you will have to pay the return shipping although some merchants will pay return shipping costs if the item is defective. Also, be sure to look for purchase and delivery deadline which most merchants publish from a link on their home page.
Use common sense. If a shopping experience does not feel right, pay attention to the warning signs and verify that the site and seller are safe before proceeding with the transaction.
Follow Ian Robinson on Twitter @_irobinson and on Facebook at bit.ly/3vln0w1.
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This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Sheriff offers tips on how to avoid thieves, scams on Cyber Monday 2021
