How to tell a secure shopping site

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Identity theft is becoming more and more prevalent in our society. As it seems to be such a difficult crime to solve, and you can steal a lot of information from the comfort of your own home, many criminals are turning to identity theft. One of the most popular ways to do this is by getting passwords and sensitive information online. If you are not careful about what you are doing online and what sites you are going to, you could wind up going to an insecure site and having your sensitive information stolen, leading to have your identity stolen.

So how can you tell what is and what is not a secure shopping site? There are a few different ways. One way is to check the URL of whatever web site that you're on. That is, check the part that is like http://helium.com. If you are on a secure site, that will be an https. That means that the site is secure and the whatever you type in and submit will be encrypted, which obviously makes it far less likely that someone will be able to steal that information. If you are inputting anything like credit card information or sensitive passwords, you need to check to make sure that it is https, otherwise you are putting yourself very much at risk.

Another thing to look for is the little "lock" icon. This will be in a different place depending on what web browser you're using, but it will usually be in one of the corners. This will also signal that you are using a secure site. So look around for that and if you see the lock icon everything should be secure. Once again, this is a must for you to find if you are inputting any type of sensitive information that you don't want anyone else to know.

There are some other things and indicators to look at to make sure a site is secure... things such as high visibility certain site seals that may be difficult to duplicate, which could mean that the site is not simply set up to steal your information. But the two main things to look for are the https and the lock icon. If you can see those two things, you can be pretty certain that you're on a secure shopping site and all of your information will be encrypted. If not, you could be putting yourself at risk for identity theft. With more and more hackers and identity thieves out there, if you are not very careful, eventually something will happen. Spare yourself that hassle and just spend a little extra to be careful to prevent anything before it happens.