Security Tips to Protect Your Identity During The Holidays

It’s a wonderful time of year for some. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday are here. Even for those who don’t participate in the madness that is the holiday shopping season can find some great deals this time of year. Unfortunately, that means the cyber thieves are also lurking around trying to make a profit off everyone else’s holiday cheer. However, there are some things you can do to lower the risk that your payment card information is stolen with all those swipes in the point-of-sale (POS) machines.

2

1. If you are given the option to use your card as debit or credit, choose credit. While you still have protections when using it as debit, the possibility of your card being re-created and used at an ATM increases when the thieves also have your PIN.

2. If you have the choice of using a payment card with a chip, use that over the one that only has the magnetic strip. It’s a little tougher to duplicate them and to get the information from them, should malware be lurking in the retailer’s system.

3. Participating in small business Saturday is a great way to support your small local businesses, but beware of getting a false sense of security because they are “mom and pop” stores. Cyber criminals are targeting these smaller businesses more often these day for various reasons. Use the same safeguards you would for any retail purchase.

4. Check payment card statements diligently during the season. Do this even more often than normal. The more you swipe or insert cards, the higher the risk of the information from them being stolen and used for fraudulent purchases. If you notice something that doesn’t look familiar, call the card issuer right away.

2

Online shopping is a great way to do your holiday shopping. However, there are different security considerations when doing so.

1. Password reuse is catching people off guard more and more these days. So dare to be different and use unique passwords for each account.

2. If you haven’t changed your online account passwords lately for your favorite retailers, take a moment to do so. It’s recommended that passwords be changed regularly. Do this quarterly if possible.

3. Make sure the sites you are putting payment card information into are secure. Look for the little lock icon in the browser and that there is an “https://” preceding the web address. Sometimes there will be green highlight on the URL indicating the site is secure. If none of those are present, don’t enter personal information.

4. Beware of malicious advertising. Cyber criminals are inserting malware into these ads catching unsuspecting ad clickers off guard. It is safer to go directly to the website being advertised rather than clicking an ad.

5. However, if you like clicking those ads, be sure to have anti-virus and anti-malware software installed and kept updated on every device used to do shopping. If you don’t care for the ads, consider ad-blocking software and apps to prevent accidentally clicking on them.

As always, use caution whenever using payment cards in any environment. And remember that most retailers will always gladly accept cash.