Identity theft while shopping online

Identity theft is a serious crime. It occurs when your personal information is stolen and used without your knowledge to commit fraud or other crimes. Identity theft can cost you time and money. It can destroy your credit and ruin your good name.

When it comes to data theft, it’s not just credit card numbers that are valuable. Hackers seek to gather information ranging from emails and passwords to social security numbers and bank details; anything that can potentially be used to steal an individual’s identity or create a new synthetic one.

For instance, even an email address is a valuable piece of data. That’s right. An email address provides a criminal with an avenue to target an individual with phishing scams. With a single scam, they can attempt to manipulate the victim into handing over their personal information or logging into a fake e-commerce website.

As per a report, nine times out of ten, customer data gets stolen from e-commerce providers due to sloppy data handling practices, such as employees sharing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in tools like Slack or email and cloud-based spreadsheets or giving employees over-privileged access to customer data.

It’s important to note that with more and more employees working in remote or hybrid environments, there’s much more room for sloppiness with data storage. In short, a lack of security training and awareness creates significant security risks to customer data.

The reality is that as an online store, every piece of information you hold about your customers is valuable and could be used to steal their identity. Your ability to protect that information is fundamental to building customer trust.

A recent report of Ivanti warned that the holiday season is rife with risks while shopping online. The more information you freely provide online, the more you put yourself at risk for identity theft. Each time you give out your email or phone number to websites to get that extra 10% off discount is another opportunity for that information to be stolen. That information often goes into a database, that when paired with your billing and shipping information, can be a great gift to an identity thief.

Hackers are constantly breaching databases. So always think twice before giving away personal identifying information online. Data protection through privacy legislation may someday be mandated by law as illustrated by India’s revised data protection bill that was tabled by Parliament, but until that day comes, the burden is on every individual to protect and secure personal information.

Stay vigilant in being aware of what information you are providing to sellers and do your due diligence to make sure a business is valid before entering any payment information — and make sure that payment information is masked. Taking that extra minute to ensure you are shopping safely can make the difference between a merry or miserable holiday season.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA