If you want to order a burger today in the streets, there’s no need to reach for your wallet. The modern world of e-commerce ensures that paying for services or any products is seamlessly done from a single tap on your phone. Conveniences brought about by online shopping is also another factor behind the growth of these digital payments.
However, it’s important to understand that e-commerce and digital money transfer have their fair share of risks. Most payment platforms leave your details and other sensitive information unprotected from third parties. Therefore, ensuring good security habits when making mobile payments is the only safety precaution to protect your financial data.
Best Cybersecurity Practices for Online Mobile Payments
Though cyberspace transactions relieve you from physical money losses, there’s still a reason to take caution with your transactions. Opting for the best cybersecurity practices is the only assurance against losing your data and financial information to fraudulent hands. Below is our compilation of the safety practices you should employ when doing your transactions
Avoid Making Payments Over a Public Network
Situation: Making online transactions has tremendous exposure to risks (which you’re already aware of). The most significant risk among them is the disclosure of your data.
Problem: A public network is a goldmine for online hackers who are always looking out for the best ways to compromise your data. Since these networks are unencrypted and unsecured, any information entered on a public network can be easily picked.
Solution: Download a VPN to encode your online activity is your only guarantee of safety when using a public network. If you don’t have VPN protection, avoid logging in to sites with your sensitive information.
Limit the Usage of Your Debit Cards
Situation: When you get used to making payments through your debit cards, much of your information is left unprotected. This gets even worse if the transaction network lacks encryption for personal data safety.
Problem: As opposed to credit cards, debit cards are usually linked to your bank accounts. This puts you at significant risk if someone manages to hack your information. The hacker may authoritatively use the information to your detriment. Therefore, losing your money becomes easy.
Solution: It’s better to use credit cards and other forms of online payments for safety. This is because credit card companies can reverse any charge when a fraudulent site or transaction is established. Alternatively, it’s safe to ensure there is proper cyber safety if you can’t avoid debit cards.
Look for Secure Shopping Sites Only
Situation: The emergency of many online shopping sites and payment platforms is furtherance of more cyber insecurity. Not all of the sites and platforms bear the same safety guarantee levels. Therefore, the probability of finding yourself transacting on an insecure platform is quite high.
Problem: Your essential information is left unprotected on such a platform. Any moment your data is entered, hackers will have their way and possibly steal valuable information.
Solution: Stay alert and learn how to identify secure sites for online transactions. Encrypted and safe sites usually have their addresses start with ‘HTTPS,’ with an ‘s’ and the end. Any site that doesn’t appear in that format is not secure for a transaction.
Be Mindful of Your Passwords
Situation: Understandably, you may want to have one password that’s uniform to all sites and it’s relatively easy to remember. Well, your data security is actually at risk if the password has been used on multiple sites for transactions.
Problem: Your passwords are the front row protectors when it comes to keeping your important data secure. Therefore, overusing them for numerous online transactions elevates the risk of being hacked. Using simple passwords is also dangerous and increases the chances of getting hacked.
Solution: Password generators come in handy in ensuring you get strong passwords that are not worth a hacker’s time to crack. Also, if you share passwords for multiple sites, take the time to change them up.
Don’t Do Transactions That Ask for Too Much Information.
Situation: There are online payment sites that will put you through a long process of information sourcing. Some may even require more information for you to complete making your orders.
Problem: Sharing too much unnecessary information on any online platform puts you at phishing risks and many more. The more information shared, the more vulnerable you become to hacking.
Solutions: Ensure you read about the site’s privacy policy before sharing any information. Also, give necessary information only. If you encounter places where sharing information is optional, kindly take advantage of not sharing and stay out of harm’s way.
Conclusion
Keeping your data and other vital information safe is the only way you can avoid cyberspace cruelty. Sticking to the best practices and seeking safe mitigation such as the above-mentioned measures will help you ramp up your cybersecurity.
