The holiday shopping season starts earlier and
earlier each year, beginning with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and running
through the to end of December.
So it’s important to have these tips ready for safe
shopping and cybersecurity for online use.
WeLiveSecurity has offered safe online shopping
advice each year since 2011, with articles specific to the cybersecurity trends
occurring at the time.
Family and friends working together for a safer
online world
For the 2017 holiday shopping season we are
focusing on how friends and families (parents and children) can work together
to not only ensure a safer holiday shopping season, but also to secure their
digital devices and protect their online activity.
Holiday shopping season has started…now!
The year over year trend shows that holiday
shopping spending is increasing each year, with a new record predicted again for 2017. People are also
starting their holiday shopping earlier.
Since people are starting their holiday shopping
earlier this year, we wanted to provide some tips to help keep your online
shopping experience safer as well as your digital devices more secure.
Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility
The holidays are a time when people purchase gifts
for their friends, families, and yes, even for themselves. Increasingly,
children are using and accessing more and more digital devices — making it
important for everyone to work together to secure these devices. The non-profit
organization Securing Our
eCity (SOeC) works tirelessly to provide cybersecurity education for
individuals and families. Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility, and
everyone should do their best to practice good cyber hygiene.
Holiday tips for you
The Executive Director for SOeC, Liz Frauman,
recently spoke on the eCity CyberTalk radio show. She offered five tips for online
shoppers, as well as the following acknowledgment that you can shop safely
online.
These tips come from Liz Frauman’s first-hand
experience of over eight years of working with people in cybersecurity.
Tip 1: Make sure
children don’t have access to an unattended device where purchases can be made.
Parents need to work with children on their “Wish
List.” In the past, children used to dog-ear pages of the Sears catalog, but
now it’s online. There are stories of children putting items on wish lists, and
then accidentally or on purpose (it depends on whom you ask!), the item is
purchased.
Recently, a friend posted a picture of an ironing
board that arrived unexpectedly on their doorstep, as it was accidentally added
to their account from their child’s wish list. They took an “unexpected
purchase selfie” with it on their porch—this is actually a thing, “unexpected
purchase selfie!”
Tip 2: Have a
separate account for online shopping credit cards that’s not connected to your
primary accounts.
Or, even better, buy yourself gift cards. Using gift cards also helps you stick to a budget.
Tip 3: Change
passwords before the holidays and then change them again after.
Or even better, use a password manager.
Choosing your password is perhaps one of the
easiest, yet most challenging security measures that you can do. The objective
is to remember it without writing it on a post-it that you keep next to your
computer, but also making it complex enough that it is not easy for hackers to
gain access to your computer. Avoid some of the following pitfalls and consider
a “pass-phrase” like “mybirthdayis1970Jan15.”
Tip 4: If you’re
buying computers or other digital devices, make sure to get products to protect
them as well, and make sure to install and configure them before the devices go
online!
If you have new digital devices planned for holiday
gifts, don’t forget the security products to help protect them. Unprotected
devices can be infected in less than five minutes.
Use family-safe software and tools. No single
technology solution meets the needs of every family, so explore the many
different tools that can help you keep your children safe online.
A few more digital device tips:
·
Use an
internet firewall at all times. The
firewall is your first line of defense in protecting your computer because it
helps to obscure your devices to online attackers and many types of malicious software.
·
Keep your
operating system up to date; enable its automatic update features. Cybercriminals are constantly at work devising
new ways to attack your computer and invade your privacy.
·
Maintain
antivirus and antispyware software. Antivirus
and antispyware software help to protect your computer by scanning email,
applications, and data that resides on your computer. Strong antivirus and
spyware programs can detect and remove viruses and spyware before they have a
chance to damage your devices.
Tip 5: Update your
products (security and firmware updates that are available between the time the
product is made and when you set it up), patches, etc.
If you remember to keep your software and firmware
up-to-date, you can help protect your computer and digital devices and keep
your computer and digital devices more secure.
For information for how families can work together
with technology for a more secure digital world, see Cyber Security Tips for Family SOeC basic tip sheet for families.