How to Shop Online Securely

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Luis Estrada, and I'm a software developer. In this video, I'll show you how to shop online securely. There are many features that web browsers have to increase your security, for shopping online. For this example, I will use two features that Internet Explorer has. Internet Explorer is a registered trademark of Microsoft, a company to which I have no affiliation. The first feature is the phishing filter. Phishing is a fraudulent activity, when someone tries to get sensitive information from you, by pretending to be someone they're not. The kind of information that criminals try to get, include user names, passwords, credit card, bank account, or social security numbers. One of the steps you can take to protect yourself from this kind of activity, is to enable the phishing filter, by clicking Tools, Enable Phishing Filter. What your web browser will do, is set the address of websites you visit, and compare them against a list of sites known for stealing user information, via phishing activities. If the website you are visiting is included in that list, Internet Explorer will display a warning. The second feature that all web browsers have, is the use of encrypted connections. Whenever you visit a website, that instead of using the http communications protocol, uses https. The information that you sent to that website, is protected by encryption algorithm. That way, only that website is able to read your information. Take into account, that when you send your credit card information, for example, this information could travel all around the world, before it reaches its destination. If along the way, there were some computer program to steal this information, you could be an easy prey, if your data is not encrypted, because it would travel as plain text. Every website that implements an encrypted connection, must acquire a security certificate. To validate the authenticity of this certificate, just click on the lock at the right of the address bar, then select View Certificates, and you will see this is a valid certificate. Never send credit card information through a website that does not use an encrypted connection, or whose certificate appears to be invalid. I'm Luis Estrada, and I've just shown you how to use your web browser."