Keeping Your Data Safe While Shopping Online

With a limitless online audience, selling your old couch, the dining room table, or even old toys your kids no longer use via online classified sites has never been easier. Classified sites like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are booming, but as anyone who has ever posted or searched for an item will tell you, the sites have become the ‘Wild West of fraud.’

Online classifieds leave it completely up to the buyer and seller to arrange item and payment transactions without built-in payment services on the platforms. Buyers and sellers are left to exchange cash, checks, cash apps, or bank transfers without built-in consumer protections. 

From fake or defective items, undelivered goods, phishing links, bait and switch, overpayment schemes, requests for multi-factor authentication codes (see section below), and giveaways. There is an ever-growing list of scams that fraudsters employ to steal from you.

If you decide to use one of these online classified sites, do your homework and read up on the growing list of scams. 

Never exchange phone numbers or communicate outside of the selling sites, like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. Never exchange account information, gift cards, money orders, deposits, or accept an overpayment where you accept a check and provide cash back. Most importantly, when in doubt, stop communicating with the individual, report the individual to Facebook, and if needed, you can call your local non-emergency police line or 911 if you are in danger.

FBI Special Agent Kenneth Klocke explains, “don’t hesitate to report criminal activity to the FBI. Don’t be embarrassed to file a complaint. We receive about 800 complaints a day, and many of those victims are duped by professional con men.”

Creating a unique and sufficiently strong password for every online account is tough. Remembering said password for each individual website can be almost impossible. With some of the top websites experiencing data breaches exposing personal information of millions, we can’t stress enough that creating a unique username and passwords for each account is vital. 

PCMag shared their simple tricks for creating and remembering strong passwords. A few years back, I took this information and found a unique way to customize it for every site that never leaves me second guessing myself. I’d share my strategy with you, but then you’d know!  

You can also explore a variety of password management products reviewed by PCMag that will do the work for you, for a fee. 

When available, be sure to utilize the Multi-Factor authentication feature for site login. Most have probably experienced this setup at one time or another in the last year or two. When logging in, the site will send a text message or email to your device with a one-time unique code.

A fraud warning with multi-factor authentication. Thieves attempting to access your account will send the code request then through a phone call, chat, or email, will ask you for this number. Customer service agents will never ask you for the MFA, so never share this one-time unique number with anyone asking for it.

You can learn more about MFA’s from the National Cybersecurity Alliance.

Where to start with this! Recently, Apple turned the table on app developers by updating its tracking transparency policy. The updated policy allows customers to opt out of tracking across other companies’ apps and websites for the purpose of advertising and sharing with data brokers. Users are now prompted to select their preference when downloading the app.

On Apple devices, you can go back and manage your tracking permissions for each app in your settings. Here’s a link with step-by-step instructions. 

Opt for private browsing and do-not-track features:

• Google Chrome. Go to the Google Support Center and search for “incognito mode.”
• Mozilla Firefox. Go to Firefox Help and search for “private browsing.”
• Microsoft Edge. Go to Edge Help and search for “InPrivate browsing.”
• Apple Safari. Go to the Apple Support Center and search for “private browsing.”