With the holiday season in full swing, students may be eager to start online shopping, seeking good deals and the convenience of delivery.
Consumers spent a record $211.7 billion while online shopping between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, according to Adobe Analytics. It’s estimated this trend will continue to increase in the United States during the 2023 holiday season, with online sales throughout November and December expected to hit $221.8 billion.
Although e-commerce can make shopping more efficient, students should be aware of the potential dangers associated with online shopping and take the proper precautions, like checking their bank accounts, changing account passwords and refraining from saving card information on websites.
When inputting necessary information for payments and shipping, people might be making their personal information vulnerable to cybercrime.
Derek Fisher, a software security adjunct professor, believes an increasingly digital society makes it easier for attackers to scam users and access their information.
“In a store you can feel things, you can touch,” Fisher said. “You see the vendor that you’re working with, you’re physically there, but online your physical senses are gone.”
One of the most well-known forms of e-commerce crime is identity theft, where a cybercriminal steals another person’s personal or financial information with the intent to conduct unauthorized financial transactions or access benefits and services in the victim’s name.
Similarly, credit card fraud is prevalent online, especially card-not-present fraud, which involves online transactions. Stolen information can be used to impersonate victims, causing financial harm and damaging credit.
Fraud and identity theft cases have nearly tripled during the last decade with the rise of the internet, reaching more than 1.4 million a year by 2022, according to the National Council on Identity Theft Protection.
Frequently checking bank activity is a simple way to identify unauthorized or suspicious transactions and report them to the bank, said Larry Brandolph, Temple’s vice president for information technology and chief information security officer.
“During this timeframe, people really should spend the extra time looking at their credit card statements, not just at the end of the month,” Brandolph said. “It’s better to see them more frequently and know that something’s occurring than to wait until the end of the month.”
Students should trust their intuition about the websites they visit. If a site looks suspicious, it’s better to avoid it than to put sensitive information at risk.
Websites that begin with “http” instead of “https” or that have a significant amount of pop-ups are some signs that a website is susceptible to breaches and should not be trusted with personal information, according to AAA.
Many consumers keep their credit card or debit card information stored on websites or in apps to make future purchases faster, but this is another way for data and information to be susceptible to breaches.
Students should re-enter their credit card information for each individual purchase or opt for the added security of a third-party payment, like Paypal or Apple Pay. Using this method means the merchant cannot access a customer’s card’s information, according to Chase Bank.
Anupa Gautam does a majority of her shopping online and is wary of getting her personal and financial information stolen, she said.
“Whenever I shop online, I usually use Apple Pay because I think it’s more secure to go through a third party,” said Gautam, a senior financial analysis major. “I wouldn’t really know the process of what to do if it did happen to me, so it’s just better to be safe.”
Using a weak or repeated password across multiple sites also increases the chance of identity or credit card theft. Students should use strong passwords and change them every three months as protection, according to McAfee.
If personal data does get compromised, students should change their passwords, check their credit reports vigilantly, freeze their credit and visit IdentityTheft.gov to report the breach and establish a recovery plan, according to Fulton Bank.
If a student suspects their credit card has been stolen, they should immediately contact their bank, change login information, monitor credit statements and dispute fraudulent purchases immediately, CNBC reported.
Although these security measures may slightly complicate online shopping, the benefits outweigh the dangers of falling victim to e-commerce scams or fraud. Students should be aware of the dangers to ensure a positive holiday shopping experience, free from cybercrime.
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