November 18, 2020

5 online shopping tips to keep your financial data secure

If you’re like most folks this year and shopping from home, Privacy Advocate Dan Arel has some tips to help you shop online without risking your personal data landing in the wrong hands.

Dan Arel is a privacy and digital rights activist, founder and curator of ThinkPrivacy.ch, as well as an award-winning journalist, and best-selling author. His work has appeared in the Huff Post, OpenSource, Hacker Noon, Time Magazine, and more. You can follow him on Twitter @danarel.

Safely shopping online does go beyond simply ensuring your payment information is sent securely.  If we’ve learned anything in the last decade, it’s that even the largest companies on the planet are vulnerable to massive data breaches.

What else is there? If you’re on a secure site, how can you ensure that you are safely shopping and not only risking your personal information but also not being tracked?

Here are five tips for a secure holiday shopping experience:

1. Use a unique password for every online store

You may spend your holiday’s shopping on various e-commerce sites this year and each of them should have their own unique login. If one of the sites is compromised and they access your email/username and password, you don’t want that information to be usable anywhere else.

Setting up a simple password manager can help you securely manage all your unique passwords, and even help you create them, so that if you’re compromised, you only have one password to worry about changing.

2. Be wary of shopping plugins

Everyone is looking for a deal when it comes to online shopping, whether it’s looking for the best price or trying to get free shipping, we all want to shave those dollars off. There are many browser plugins that claim to help you find such deals, but often at the cost of your privacy or even browser security.

Instead, use Startpage to search for coupons or deals, rather than relying on a plugin that you need to grant rights access to.

Install always-on privacy
Install Startpage's private search browser extension.

3. Avoid using credit cards when possible

Credit cards are extremely vulnerable to attacks and are also the top source of identity theft. When possible, use PayPal, or ApplePay which do not use your credit card number. There are also companies that offer virtual cards for unique use, meaning if the card number was stolen, it would not be useful.

4. Use caution when clicking on email offers

If you’ve ever bought something online before, you know you will be hammered with emails from those stores afterward. However, this is also a popular time for bad actors to send emails that look as if they are coming from your favorite retailers and using them to gain access to your accounts. A good indication is to first look at the email address. Is it from the same URL the store uses? If you have any doubts whatsoever, don’t click the email link. Instead, go directly the website and look for the same offer you see in the email.

5. Use Startpage when researching for or comparing  products online

Sometimes you’re searching for the right thing to buy someone and not just sitting on a big online retailer but looking for something more unique. Well, that shouldn’t be anyone’s business but your own and at most the retailer you decide to do business with. Non-privacy respecting search engines use your searches to then target you with ads based on them.

Whether you’re searching for toys, gadgets, gag gifts, or something more intimate for your partner, it should not define your digital profile. Using Startpage ensures your searches don’t go beyond your own eyes.

Shopping this holiday season is gearing up to be stressful enough with what is bound to be extended shipping times, and the fact many won’t be able to travel or spend time with their loved ones.

Don’t let a mistake online make it harder. Use these steps, coupled with a little common sense. You will have a much more enjoyable holiday season that doesn’t involve hours on the phone with your bank or credit card company trying to get thousands of dollars back.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Startpage.

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