5 tips for safe online shopping this Christmas

The festive season brings with it crowded malls and long queues stretching for miles.

Thanks to new technology and smartphone apps, shoppers can do all their shopping from the comfort of their home - online.

Everything from buying groceries, furniture, presents and clothes is available online.  You can buy your entire Christmas lunch (and dessert), presents for the kids and a new sofa to impress the in-laws in minutes.

But using you bank or credit cards online is not without its risks. 

The SA Banking Risk Information Centre recently issued a warning to bank customers to be vigilant of bank-related scams during the festive season - which tend to increase during this time of the year. 

Heino Gevers, a security specialist at Mimecast, says South Africa is the second most targeted country in the world when it comes to Internet fraud and phishing - losing over R2.2-billion a year.

He says what is even scarier in the fact that more people in Africa have access to the Internet than electricity - making consumers more exposed to threats than ever before. 

Gevers has shared a few tips on how to avoid falling victim to fraudsters online. 

1. Be wary of emails and text messages containing Internet links

"Be on the lookout for devious type of emails," says Gevers. "Do not access any social sites or e-commerce sites via links. I would rather go to that particular site directly. [There are] a number of phishing attempts being sent around via email which appear to be sent from the banks themselves. Banks, or any financial institution for that matter, will never ever ask you to validate or verify your credentials (personal info or login details) via email or SMS."

2. Use loyalty points

"Rather look at using loyalty points online, instead of your credit card. Loyalty points are earned through a rewards system made via your medical aid or financial institution. Those loyalty points are earned and there is a cap on how much you have at any given point in time. So if it is compromised and people do use it outside of your knowledge, it won't be that significant," Gevers says.

3. Be cautious around using promotion codes 

Gevers says if you receive a promotion via email, rather access the site directly and verify with that site if that promotion is actually valid. 

"Because in most cases they (criminals) would request that you provide your credit card details etc., so that they can do some identity theft and buy on your behalf," he says.

4. Check where you procure or buy online

"Rather go to sites that you are well aware of and that have a good reputation in the market. Do some research; don't just buy from the first site you come across that seems like it is hosting lots of specials and offers good deals. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."

5. Curiosity killed the cat

"People by nature are quite curious. Users actually tend to investigate the URL by clicking on it and going to the site to see what it is all about. Although the curiosity might be hard to fight, I would just delete the email and not even try to attempt to access the URL if you are not familiar with the sender," Gevers suggests. He says these sometimes are not just phishing attacks. "A lot of these types of attacks happen through botnet viruses as well, which run a worm or such on your system. It can harvest information about an individual and broadcast that to cyber criminals. It most cases it does not happen in front of you but it happens in the background and you only find out about it once your banking account has been cleared out."

Gevers says if you are not sure about a URL, there are certified websites that can verify URLs. He says a good one is: scanurl.net. However, Gevers says it is always best to go directly to the site concerned.