Staying Safe Online During the Holiday Period
cyberspace...
It may well be the season of goodwill but don’t count on cyber criminals dropping it all to sing carols door to door. Christmas is a time when online sales break records year after year, great for the economy and great for the beneficiary of that cheap aftershave set you got on sale online (whilst stock lasted).
We all know shopping is a hassle (ok us men folk do) so here are a few tips on staying safe online when it comes to exchanging your credit card number for something you or anyone else don’t need (I’m kidding – you’ll be poorer but happier).
Shopping Online Tips
- Don’t run off and click on links to all those emails you receive from stores you’ve never heard of. (And if you have heard of the store, don’t click the link go to the domain directly).
- A great chrome and firefox (and explorer {spit}) addon gives you details on where the site you’re visiting is hosted. Flagfox for Firefox and Ultimate Chrome Flag for Chrome. Alarm bells should ring if you can the see the flag of China whilst supposedly on Groupon. Clicking/hovering over the flag should also provide additional info.
- You can always do a whois search on the website in question. If you’re shopping on a ccTLD (eg .co.uk site) you can always look up who and where the company is based. For uk domains check out nominet and do a whois search.
- Check out the SSL certificate. Remember, if you’re going to be revealing sensitive information – the page should be in http secure (https). By clicking on that padlock in the browser window you’ll get further information on the trust level of the site.
As for those that travel back home / away during the holiday period one things for sure – you’re going to have to check your email. All well and good you might say, but when the Blackberry’s playing up its time to switch on Aunties desktop – damn Windows 98.
Before you leave home I suggest you set up a new temporary email addy and put in an email forwarder in place. (This is not to be confused with some time waster forwarding on a chain email on how if you don’t forward it on to ten other people your penis will fall off). Remember the email sent to your actual email addresses will stay there – a copy will be forwarded on. So let’s say you’ve got 3 email addresses that you forward onto this temporary email aggregator – all you need to do is check one email address. If on the odd chance Aunties computer has more viruses then a hospital and you NEED to check your email atleast this will keep damage down to a minimum. Just remember to only forward on new emails – not the entire mailbox. Oh and make sure you use a different password to access the temporary address. This tip also works for those travelling abroad – lets say you desperately need to check an email whilst in an internet café in Nigeria (ok lets make it Italy) atleast you wont be entering in your main email credentials. Alternatively pack the laptop and take down Aunties bandwidth by downloading all you can find.
Additionally, set up an ‘away’ message so senders know you wont respond until the date mentioned.
Further reading when you get bored.
Use Gmail to Pull Mail from Other Accounts : Solo Technology – Gmail Logo I’m not sure where I saw this first… While I was taking a few days off for a quick family vacation quite a few folks mentioned an exciting new Gmail feature: Now Gmail can check for the mail you receive at your other email …
(image source – Patrick Hoesly)
