1. Maintaining a paper-trail is as easy as printing the receipt to PDF and/or saving the confirmation-receipt email in an in-box folder named “shopping”.
2. Is your browser updated – if not you do not have the latest in security updates and that equates to vulnerability.
3. Check the company’s online inventory policy. Some ecommerce sites (especially the gift basket/food sites) swap out items you have ordered. This is not evident at check out. So a quick call to a human CSR might be in order. “am I getting what I purchased?” fair question.
4. Separate email, most larger carriers allow you 5-7 emails at home now. Create one just for shopping – even safer than web-based email.

5. Separate credit card with lower limit that has heavy security flag on it.

6. Fake is phishing … proceed with caution. If your kids are helping /Great/ but show them how to determine a site is secure. Security seals place on the site is not enough. The https and reviewing the url for proper spelling but even easier is to just notice the bright green url bar distinguishing extended validation SSL (the highest form of encryption.)

7. It is not uncommon for most people to subscribe to tech-news during the holiday. That way when you open your email you will be alerted of any recent attacks on the web. You might even want to do that all year round.

Happy Holidays from VeriSign employee