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Buyer Beware: Protect Yourself While Holiday Shopping

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It’s no secret that Holiday 2015 shopping is in full swing. In fact, the nation’s transition from pumpkin to peppermint felt so much faster this year, many a Facebook feed near me growled and bemoaned the early onset of the holiday season.

That said, we all have shopping to do and during the mad rush, scams abound. It’s easy to see how the sensible, commonplace everyday security measures may fall through the cracks as we seek to make our lists and check them twice. Worse still, as hackers get slicker and more sophisticated, personal information hacks now go far beyond random entities calling, posing as our health care provider and randomly asking for a social security number.

We reached out to a few experts to see what they recommend for consumers. Here are some tips to protect yourself and your accounts during your holiday mad dash.

1) Skip setting up an account with a merchant for a one-time online purchase.

If you’re not planning on regularly shopping at an online merchant, consider checking out as a guest. “You don’t need to open an account if you don’t think you’ll go back and make a purchase again,” says Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance. “Why make an account with a username and password if you won’t go back? A hacker could access your info, and if you’re rushing in the holidays, [you might] and use a crappy password that could be easily guessed. Why go through that hassle?”

2) Get your bank involved.

Depending on your bank’s policies, you can set monetary parameters for transactions and monitor the geographic locations where they are allowed to take place. For example, says Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of Risk Products at Visa, every transaction over $50-$100 could trigger a monitoring of your accounts. If the limit is hit, your bank then sends you an email or text message to confirm your approval of the transaction. In terms of location, “ If you’re typically shopping in California, or the San Francisco Bay area and your phone is pinging in New York, it’s going to look like a much higher risk transaction,” says Ericksen.

3) Buy those deeply discounted items at your own risk.

In the rush to get the best deal on the season’s hottest items, it might be tempting to buy the object of your affection for the lowest price you find. This can backfire according to Kaiser, as phishing websites pop up. They look legit, offer you the merchandise and end up stealing your information. “Make sure the websites where you are shopping are “https” websites, or that you see a green bar or a lock on your screen that tells you security software encryption is present in the transaction,” he says. Kaiser also notes that some websites won’t have these protection measures in place until it’s time to check out.

4) Be on the lookout for post-purchase personal information request red flags.

After you’ve checked out, clever hackers might come at you with a friendly email asking for way too much information. While your social security number is the obvious red flag, Ericksen and Kaiser note that other clever crooks have asked over the phone and in email for things like PIN confirmations and verification of email and physical addresses, passwords and credit card information. One such scam involves reaching out to customers to say there is an issue with their order as an attempt to glean personal information. “In the frenzy of shopping, people sometimes might have their guard down,” says Kaiser. “Your personal info is like money. Value and protect it. Be aware of the information that is being collected.”

5) Finally, protect your purchase by making sure it arrives safely.

Tobias Hartmann and Michael Graff of Ebay Enterprise's Fraud Technology Lab note that residents in high-traffic or low-security areas are more susceptible to having their packages snatched. Thieves often make it a point to memorize the package delivery schedule and then pose as a concierge, or simply take packages when they know nobody’s home. If you fall into one of these categories, rather than having something delivered to your physical address, Hartmann and Graff suggest customers opt for an in-store pickup, or have the item shipped to an alternate address where someone will be home to receive the package.

Bonus: Brush up on your chip card etiquette.

At the end of October, Ericksen estimates that 180 million customers were issued a chip card to replace the traditional magnetic strip credit cards in their wallets. As merchants continue to add chip card processing as part of their payments, customers in the bricks-and-mortar shops should take heed to leave their card in the terminal until the terminal says it’s ok to remove it. “While the card is in the terminal, a one-time code is generated that makes that transaction more secure,” says Ericksen.