Survey: Only half of Americans think they know when online shopping is safe

Shoppers beware:

• The brands that are likely to have the most phishing attempts this year are Amazon, Walmart, and Target, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
• Clicking on false links from emails or typing in web site urls with slight misspellings, such as Walmaart instead of Walmart, can expose consumers to ransomware or to unintentionally releasing their financial or personal information.

The state of online shopping:

• 77% of Americans reported they had mistyped an address in their browser and ended up at a different site than they intended, according to the survey.
• 68% have clicked on a link in an email that has taken them somewhere else than they expected.
• Only 13% reported changing DNS settings on their computer and 11% on their wireless router.

Tips, according to Gang Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech:

• Avoid clicking on links that have been emailed to you to avoid phishing or spoofing scams.
• Browsing on sites with https, not http, is safer, since criminals can monitor network traffic on http sites and lift credit card information, for example.
• Shopping on mobile devices could be riskier than shopping on a computer, since url bars are smaller and reading whether they are shortened or legitimate might not be possible.