How to be cyber savvy

Shopping online is a great way to save time and money but those efficiencies quickly vanish for people who lack basic online-shopping smarts.

Take a few minutes to review these safe shopping tips: They may just save you a world of headache and financial pain.

1. Shop with a credit card, not a debit card. The banks are pushing more consumers towards debit cards with a bevy of award programmes, because they can charge merchants higher fees than on credit card-based transactions, said Avivah Litan, a fraud analyst with Gartner Inc. But if your debit card number gets stolen, it might be somewhat more complicated to sort things out, especially if fraud causes overdrafts and bounced cheques.

2. Keep track of your receipts. Some experts advise online shoppers to keep printouts of all receipts. That's fine but a simpler and more "green" alternative to this important tip is to just take a screen shot of your order details or save the page as an HTML file.

3. Shop from a locked-down PC. One piece of advice you almost always see in online shopping tips is to make sure you're running up-to-date antivirus software. That's fine advice, of course, but if you're just getting around to taking it, you might want to think twice about shopping online at all with that computer: It may already have a keystroke-logging virus on it. The best piece of advice: Use a Mac or, if you have more than one computer at home, avoid shopping on the household's communal computer.

4. Look for the SSL sign/padlock in the browser's address bar. If you don't see this conspicuously on the page, asking you to enter your personal and financial details, run away. This is the hallmark of one of thousands of fly-by-night consumer electronics shops on the web. These phantom storefronts often rip off entire display pages from legitimate stores and are here today, gone tomorrow.

5. Avoid bargain-basement shopping online. There's nothing wrong with wanting the best price but be aware that last year we saw plenty of phantom stores pop up around the holidays, advertising prices way below name-brand stores. If you're the type of shopper who buys from the cheapest online store regardless of whether you have ever bought anything from the site before, consider using comparison-shopping sites such as Pricegrabber.com and Bizrate.com.

6. Double-check shipping policies. Make sure you understand the shipping and return policies before you click that "buy" button. Look for stores that offer a shipping date guarantee and make sure the items you want are actually in stock.

For the skittish: AVG recently published a guide that urges consumers who are uncomfortable with entering their credit card details online to consider using an "e-card" solution that gives you the ability to create a temporary card number to be used just once. Other security tips I have seen advise online shoppers who are worried about fraud to consider a prepaid credit card to protect against having their real credit card number stolen.

Most of the ecard solutions I have tried — Citibank's, for example — are difficult to find and not easy to use. As a consumer, if someone steals your credit card number and uses it to make fraudulent purchases, your liability is limited and most banks will waive that amount, provided you report any unauthorised charges within two days of noticing them. On the other hand, getting a new credit card as a result of fraud can be disruptive and time-consuming, particularly if you have multiple recurring bills set up to use the old credit card number.

If you don't feel comfortable using credit or debit cards, many sites let you pay using "BillMeLater".

7. Read the fine print. CNET's Dennis O'Reilly has a good tip in his safe online shopping summary: "Just as you can find your browser sporting a new toolbar if you rush through an update of your media player or PDF reader, being in a hurry when you make a web purchase can cause you to ‘sign up' for unwanted offers."

8. Shopping online at work could be hazardous to your career. The Monday after Thanksgiving is often referred to as "Cyber Monday" because many shoppers use the day to buy stuff online that they poked at and played with in stores over the previous weekend. But you might want to think twice about online shopping while at work.

Jackie Ford at Marketwatch.com writes: "Regardless of how you are paid, you are probably an at-will employee — which means you can be fired any time for any reason or even for no reason at all. By surfing when you should be working, you may be making yourself the perfect nominee for the next round of downsizing."