Since with increasing online payment transactions, Credit & Debit Cards are the most prevailing fraud cases encountered. These fraud transactions mainly occur with already existing accounts or an impostor who got your data and made a new account (known as identity theft).
However, you can keep in mind the following to make sure if the website you are accessing is secure :
- Always make sure the site you are accessing is secured with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. How do you check if it’s SSL certificate protected? For example, you are shopping from a site like https://www.sitename.com
a. Make sure it’s HTTP protocol is appended with ‘s’ (s stands for secure) i.e. ‘https’.
b. There is a small padlock icon before the site’s name. This depicts that its SSL secured.
2. While payment transactions make sure the site follows the “3D Secure” protocol(3D Secure is an authentication protocol that provides an additional layer of security with one-time passwords). For example, if you are using the following cards, 3D Secure protocol is identified respectively as follows :
a. Visa as Verified by Visa
b. MasterCard as MasterCard Secure Code
If you are using one of the above, check for its logo on the payment transaction page :
SSL & 3D Secure are minimum requirements for payment transaction and does not prove that your data is going to be 100% protected. However, it does reduce the risk of any kind of fraud significantly with one-time password authentication. It is also important to note that, at times, lack of awareness of digital transactions among users can outrank the monetary frauds by impostors.
– Nidhi Mehta
