There are 'simple ways' to stay safe online

2010-01-21

There are a number of ways that people can protect themselves from the various online threats that are out there and they can be fairly simple as well.

For starters, if a user is suspicious of a website then they should not use it, said Sarah Blaney, card fraud expert at CPP, which offers support and protection for its customers' plastic cards, mobile phones and identities.

"Make sure you are looking for things like the locked padlock to show it is secure. Retailers are now using things like Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode as extra security checks," she explained. Such services should be used when shopping online, whether at home or at work, as it lowers that risk of becoming a victim, Ms Blaney recommended.

"A lot of sites that are shown to be fraudulent have got basic spelling errors and things like that, which you wouldn't expect from a normal retailer's site," she asserted.

She noted that while there has been a reduction of card cloning and skimming on transactions in high street shops, fraudsters have moved online as there are fewer security checks and a pin number is not required to verify any sort of transaction.

Ms Blaney said that online fraud is now the most pervasive kind of card fraud.

Her comments came after a poll from CPP indicated that there have been almost three million extra victims of fraud in the last two years. This represented a rise of six per cent.

Of the 39 per cent of respondents who said they have been a victim of card fraud in the last 12 months, almost a third (32 per cent) were hit by online fraud. This is in comparison to the 17 per cent who were targeted by chip and pin fraud.

The research also found that the the average amount of money transacted fraudulently stood at £2,420.

Read more security news.