- Every day you're getting hit up with email marketing,
banner advertisements, and even text adverts
telling you about the latest deals and sales.
Unfortunately, as buying online
becomes more and more popular, so do online scams.
Last year scams cost us over $4.2 billion in losses,
and that's just in the United States.
The last thing you need right now
is to get swindled out of your hard earned money.
So before you start shopping online,
here's what you really need to know.
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Welcome to All Things Secured, my name is Josh,
and I'm gonna make this as helpful as I can for you.
I'm gonna share
five actionable tips that will turn you from an easy
target to a savvy secure online shopper.
And honestly, I don't care how old you are.
Studies show that teens are falling prey to online scams
at a faster rate than their grandparents are.
As in 500% faster between 2017 and 2020.
So what can you do when you're going online to shop?
Well, you can start with this,
look for the lock, don't use debit, check for credibility,
turn away if it's too good to be true,
and my favorite, fake the facts.
Each of these is super important,
so stick through the end with me
as we discuss them individually.
Look for the lock.
You wanna look for this padlock
next to the URL on your internet browser
as you're shopping on a website,
which means that the site has a verified SSL certificate.
Now, while this security certificate can't be taken
as the end-all-be-all indicator of trust,
what this does mean is that if you come across a website
that isn't secured, where the padlock isn't shown,
then 100% of the time,
you should not provide your credit card information
or even your name.
In fact, just close down that browser window
as soon as you can.
Do not buy from that website period.
Now we'll talk more about trust indicators in a moment,
but for now simply remember this,
you need to look for the lock.
Don't use debit directly.
I'm referring of course, to using a debit card
issued by your bank to make purchases online.
Not only does debit offer very little fraud protection,
it's also directly tied to your bank account,
which is not a good thing when we're talking about fraud.
So this means you should always use a credit card, right?
Wrong.
What this means is that you should always attempt
to mask your financial information,
whatever way is easiest and most secure for you.
For example, if you trust Apple or PayPal
with your credit card information, then when you
pay online using those services,
the online merchant
never actually receives your credit card numbers.
They simply receive authorization of payment
from Apple or PayPal.
So if I buy a gift for my wife
on some random person's Shopify store using PayPal,
neither that store owner nor Shopify can see my credit card,
and that is masking.
The same goes for virtual cards.
For those of you who don't use credit cards,
you can mask your financial information,
whether that's your debit card or your bank
by using a virtual card
that can have spending limits or even be one-time use.
So for example, when I visit a newer website
where I wanna buy a gift,
I can literally create a new virtual card
that expires the moment after I use it.
So that even if that hard number is stolen,
it can't be used anywhere else.
Now a lot of banks are starting to offer virtual cards,
not just in the United States, but all over the world.
And there are third-party companies
that you can use as well.
If you wanna learn more, and it really is interesting,
you can check out this video
on virtual credit cards that I have here.
Check for credibility.
This is a hard one because it's a bit subjective.
Before you purchase from any third-party website
that isn't Amazon, Walmart, or any other big name retailer,
you need to look for signs of credibility.
And even if it is a big box retailer,
I've heard of so many instances
where a person receives an email
that looks like it's from a reputable store.
And then they click a link to a website
that looks like it's from that reputable store,
but it is in fact, a fake store
that's meant to have you give away
your payment information.
This is common.
So the first thing that I would say is to just be careful
about what links you click and emails.
I've got a whole video about this that you should look at
if you're really interested in it.
Next, here are a couple ideas for ways
that you can check for credibility on the websites
that you do end up visiting.
Double check the URL.
It shouldn't be Anazon with an N,
it needs to be Amazon with an M.
If you're skeptical, you can go to something like
islegitsite.com to check the trustworthiness of a website.
It'll give you a trust rating, a blacklist report,
and even a URL creation date
to make sure that it's not something
that was just thrown up last week.
You can search for off-site reviews,
do a search in Google with the phrase, is blank legit,
using the name of the website you're purchasing from
to see what comes up.
You can try searching the better business bureau.
And finally, just pay close attention to your intuition.
That little voice in your head
that says that grammar doesn't sound right
or something doesn't feel right about this.
Oftentimes, our brains may not be able to tell us
exactly what's wrong,
but it can send up those valuable warning signals.
Okay, these next two tips are probably the most important.
Before we get to that,
why not stay up to date on the latest
personal security trends
by clicking that subscribe button right here?
Turn away if it's too good to be true.
Intuitively, you know this.
I think we all know this, but for some reason,
we also all wanna be that person who got an amazing deal.
And unfortunately, that presents more of a risk
than it's worth.
Sometimes it's just a flat-out scam,
but other times you don't see the hidden costs.
Maybe it's shipping costs,
maybe it's actually a refurbished item instead of a new one,
or have you ever seen those commercials
where they have the bidding sites
where let's say somebody wins an Apple iPad
for something like $27?
Well, yeah, you have to pay up to $1
for every bid that you make.
And on average, most people end up bidding up to 60
or more times to just to get the item.
And sometimes they don't win,
which means they just paid $60 for nothing.
So if it's too good to be true, turn away.
Finally, and this one's my favorite, fake the facts.
What do I mean by this?
Well, in the same way that we talked about
masking your financial information,
you can also mask or even flat out lie
about other pieces of information.
For example, when I'm entering my billing information,
I never input my actual address.
The only real piece of information is my zip code.
Why?
'Cause they don't need it
even if they mark it as required.
The only thing they need,
the only thing that they check with your bank
is your zip code.
So I don't wanna voluntarily give them my billing address
if I don't have to.
Now, obviously, if you're purchasing an item
that needs to be shipped,
you need to give them a valid shipping address,
but I try to limit how many online accounts
have that kind of information on me.
I also don't give out my real email address.
There are ways to mask your email address,
including Apple's Hide My Email feature,
which I discussed in this video before.
Or I'm testing out this exciting new feature
that allows me to create mask emails
directly through my one password account.
I'll probably be creating a video about that later.
But doing this helps me take control of my email
so that these online stores can't just start
bombarding me with advertisements now that I'm a customer.
Remember, you wanna look for the lock,
don't use debit, check for credibility,
turn away from too good to be true offers,
and fake the facts when possible.
If you enjoyed this video, smash that like button.
And to really level up your security,
start using two-factor authentication.
I recommend you watch this video next
about setting up a 2FA key.
Cheers.