Year after year, more and more consumers are embracing the online shopping trend but there is one major downside affecting the e-Commerce economy: FRAUD. Authorities reported that such frauds are likely to occur around the holiday season. Seeing that Christmas is almost upon us, we’d like to alert both consumers and merchants alike on how to avoid being victims of scams so prevalent on the World Wide Web today.

Hints and pointers for consumers:
1. Avoid being victims of phishing websites. You can do so by logging into your account at websites using ONLY the actual URL. DO NOT be tempted to click on links sent to you via email as these may be sent from scammers who are out to retrieve your precious passwords and other details.
2. Make sure you change your passwords often to avoid detection. DO NOT write your precious passwords on a piece of paper to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
3. Keep records of whatever transactions are made online. Useful tip: Use your printscreen (PrtSc) button on your keyboard to grab a screen capture of the transaction and save it as a .jpg inside a secure folder.
4. Read a website’s T&Cs and make sure you fully understand the site’s delivery and return policies to avoid any nasty surprises later on.

Hints and pointers for merchants
1. Take great care to ensure you are PCI compliant. In case fraud happens on your site, your PCI compliance status will protect you and reduce your liability. That way you will be able to hold on your credit card transaction license
2. Take the initiative to update your security and admin settings. For instance if the default password is “password123″ you should change it into something less obvious – like “wordpass321xyz”. That way thieves will not be able to guess your password and hack into your database.

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