How to protect your identity while shopping
Posted Dec 15, 2009 7:26 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Before you head out for some Christmas shopping, you might want to empty out your purse or wallet and take just the basics with you in case of theft.
Wayne Wood with the provincial Privacy Commissioner’s office tells 660News you don’t need to take your social insurance number.
When you’re at the checkout he advises you to make sure the PIN pad is in plain sight and not under a desk where your card can be swiped somewhere else.
If you shop online, he says, the first thing you should do is make sure you’re on a secure website.
Wood says one of the ways you can tell this is by making sure the web address says “https” as opposed to just “http.”
He says the “s” means it has security.
Also at the top of the screen, he says, there should be a little gold-coloured ‘lock’ symbol which will show that you’re on a secure site.
