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Credit Card Internet Security

The Internet has become a large part of our credit card spending habits but also offers the highest risk of fraudulent use of our credit card information as well as other financial fraud and identity theft.

Here we offer some simple steps that you can take to reduce the risk of your credit card information being misused, together with other general precautions that you should take when using the Internet and e-mail.

For information on preventing fraudulent use of your credit card that is not directly related to the use of Internet, please read the information provided on our Credit Card Fraud page.

• Never give your credit card details or other personal information to any organisation or person that you do not know and trust.

• When providing your credit card details to a web site, always ensure that you have a secure link to the web site and check the site's certificate.

• Never follow links to web sites that you receive in e-mails. This will help protect you from phishing scams. If you think that you have received an email from your bank or credit card provider, open your browser and enter the site's address yourself. Add the site's address to your favorites or bookmarks, for convenience.

• Never open attachments that you receive in e-mails unless you can be absolutely sure who they have come from and that you can trust them. Even then, you are at risk from receiving a virus or running other malicious software.

• To find out if you are connected to a secure server, look for a padlock in the status bar at the bottom of your browser; most popular web browsers identify secure servers in this way. This means that any information sent between your browser session and the web site is encrypted and cannot be viewed by others. You should also check the certificate of the web site. You can usually do this by double-clicking the padlock. Certificates are usually issued by well known signing authorities such as Verisign and will identify who the certificate has been issued to and the dates of its validity.

• Extra care should be taken when using wireless networks, especially public WiFi access points. You should be especially careful only to use sites that operate with a secure server. Even using web mail or your email client will put you at risk from other users on the wireless network who may be able to see your data. If you need to disclose confidential information and do not have access to a secure server, you can use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. This will ensure that all of your data is encrypted between you and the provider.

• Extreme caution should be used when using any computer that is not under your control. This may be a computer in a public place such as a Library, Internet Cafe or even be a friend's computer. Web browsers may leave a trace of what you have been doing, including your account names and passwords. In some cases, the computer may have even been maliciously compromised so that it deliberately records what you do.

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