Cyber Monday: Protect Yourself from Nastiness

Cyber Monday has become to online shoppers what Black Friday has been to brick-and-mortar deal hunters for years: a love-hate experience in bargain shopping that can make heroes of the meek and reduce even the mightiest men to heaps of burnt out frustration.

It can also be a hey-day for online identity theft, scams, and spam.  Make sure you're shopping smart when you're online this year.  Stay away from shady deals, especially if you didn't explicitly request information from a particular online retailer.  Don't use links that arrived as part of an advertisement email.  If you got something in an email and you're really interested in learning more about it, open a new browser window and type the address of the retailer directly into the address bar yourself, that way you can be sure you're going to the retailer's site, as opposed to a spoofed website where your personal information can be collected and sold.  Finally, make sure the computer you're using to do your online shopping is fully up-to-date with the latest security patches.  This can prevent a lot of malicious software from being able to take hold of your computer.

Check out PCMag.com's article on safe cyber-shopping for more information and tips on how you can make it through Cyber Monday unscathed.