Saving Your Card Details on Websites or Apps? Your Bank Balance could be in Danger!

Internet has made our lives very easy in many ways. From being the vast hub of knowledge to be the perfect place for all your shopping needs, the internet has it all. But all this ease of living has left us so much more exposed to the threats of the outside world. And the area where this fact hits home the hardest is when it comes to finances.

Almost every other transaction these days is processed through internet, either via a payment gateway or digital wallets and apps. Right from the payment of your bills, pre-paid recharges and insurance renewals to daily shopping, ticketing, almost everything has embraced the digital payment ecosystem.

However, the speed at which digital payments has penetrated in India does not match the speed at which the cyber security awareness has reached people. You must have heard about the cases of cyber crimes which are gaining pace day by day, which must have made you worried about the security of your funds and transactions.

Hackers have many ways to steal your card information and other monetary details to sweep away the money from your account, but just by keeping certain basic precautions, you can ensure the safety of all your transactions.

• Avoid Saving Your Card Details

Whenever you use a new card to make a payment on websites, the site usually prompts you to save your card details to speed up the payment next time. But the same should be avoided.

It is easy for the hackers to retrieve your saved data from a website and hence saving your card details on websites should be avoided.

• Don’t Let Your Phone Talk to Strange Connections - Use Secure Connection

Treat your phone as your child and instruct it to not speak to strangers and not accept any candies from them. Always choose a well known and secure connection for conducting payment transactions.

Making payments over public networks including public Wi-Fi should be avoided. The information sent over such public network can be visible to the network administrator or other users who are connected to the same network.

You should use either your own Wi-Fi or data network for any transaction. All transactions should be always processed and initiated on either private network or trusted networks.

• Complicate Your Passwords and Don’t Write It Down!

Almost every other transaction on the internet is protected by a password. The password can be a combination of alphanumeric characters and special characters. It is recommended to keep your password long and complicated.

Password such as your name or date of birth are very easy to guess and can be misused. Your password should be a combination of letters, numbers, special characters and include both the cases to make it complicated to guess.

• Make Two Factor Authorization Your Friend

It’s very likely that you would be getting irritated by the double cover of protection on your transactions on the internet. But the bottomline is that IT IS IMPORTANT. PERIOD.

Every bank with internet banking facility and every card issuer provides two factor authorization facility, sometimes as an option and sometimes as mandatory. Even if someone has your password, he needs a separate One Time Password which is generally unique for every transaction and generated instantly. Without OTP the transaction cannot be processed. Therefore, it is recommended to have your two-factor authorization enabled from your bank and card issuer.

• Remember That Discussion on Http and Https?

It is also required to analyze the security of any website before entering any of the payment details on it. A website which does not have TLS certificate or encryption can be risky, because the information exchanged between the site and you can be visible to anyone who intercepts it in between.

The website has a protocol which can either be http or https. The s in the protocol denotes that the website is SSL certified and is safe and encrypted.

• Transact Only from Reputed Merchants and Gateways  

It is always good to buy and transact only from trusted and reputed merchants. Buying from new websites and merchants can be risky.

The payment get way used by the merchant should also be reputed. In case any of the two appears to be fishy, you should at once exit from the page.

If all the above parameters are kept in mind before initiating any online payment or transaction the risk of any fraudulent transaction is reduced. There are various alternatives which can be used to safeguard your transactions. One such method is the use of Virtual Credit Cards. With the increasing number of users for e-commerce and online banking the number of hackers and criminals is also increasing. It is recommended to have precautions every time before transacting online.

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