Protect yourself When Shopping Online.

• Position: INTERNET SCAMMERS

With the holidays upon us, it is peak time for scammers and hackers to wreak havoc on unsuspecting shoppers. The Federal Trade Commission received 2,200,000 fraud reports in 2020, with consumers reporting losses of $3,300,000,000, and nearly $5,000,000,000 has been lost to online shopping scams in the first nine months of 2021.

"Don't be too quick to jump at seemingly 'too good to be true' offers. Often, these offers will more likely than not contract malware on your device or download some unwanted clutter software rather than give you a bargain," says Daniel Markuson, a digital privacy specialist at NordVPN. "In the end, protecting yourself online is mostly up to you."

Here are five tips from Markuson on how to avoid being scammed while shopping online:

Stick to https websites. "As a means of security, it's important to visit and shop on sites that use https. The 's' stands for 'secure,' and sites that use https ensure that your personal details are at least protected by TLS encryption. This extends from your browser to the site you are on. While https isnt everything when it comes to security, it definitely ensures a level of protection.

"Checking whether or not a site uses https is easy to do. You simply look at the URL bar to see if it begins with 'https:// the way it does on our website."

Check that the URL is right. "It sounds simplistic, but it's important to remember to do this prior to entering personal information to complete your purchase. Making sure you're on the right online store could be the difference between entering your card details on 'Nike.com' and 'n1ke.com.' This small variance in URLs leaves a huge opportunity for hackers and scammers to land you on a malicious website. This practice is called spoofing the URL

"If you think you're on an imitation site, delete everything you entered and exit the site."

Beware of shortened URLs. "Marketing experts often make use of URL shorteners so long URLs are more aesthetically appealing, but this opens the door for scammers. These bad actors can use URL shorteners to hide the URL you're opening.

"If you...