As online holiday shopping ramps up ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, RCMP are reminding residents of some safety tips to use while cyber shopping.
In Alberta in 2020, there were 49 reports of unauthorized use of credit card data.
In the last two months of 2020, there were over 800 reports of fraud involving money, property or security under or equal to $5000.
When shopping online police say residents should:
- Not reuse passwords, change them often, and be sure to use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters to create a strong one.
- Many websites, especially social media platforms, offer the option of multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication makes it more difficult for criminals to access your accounts by needing more than one piece of identifying information.
- Review privacy settings regularly in order to control who can see what personal information is posted to your profile.
- Buy from reputable sources and don’t let unbeatable prices cloud your judgement.
- Avoid conducting financial transactions via public Wi-Fi.
- Install updates on your devices as soon as you’re prompted. Updates fix security issues.
- Phishing is a commonly used tactic for cyber crime. Phishing messages ask you to validate information by clicking links and may threaten you with legal action. Verify legitimacy by calling the company directly.
Alberta RCMP invite residents to follow on their Facebook and Twitter pages for more information.
