Last year, 92 million people bought things online using credit cards, debit cards and services like PayPal and Google Checkout. Millions of others paid bills and wired money electronically from bank accounts with just a few clicks.
Despite the apparent popularity of all these services, they still cause nagging anxiety for many of us.
There are a few precautions everyone should take. First, look for signs of quality security at sites you use, like logos, or seals, from security providers like VeriSign and McAfee, said Aleksandr Yampolskiy, director of security at the luxury shopping site Gilt Groupe. To check that a seal is legitimate, click on it to make sure it takes you to the verification page of the security service.
Password-management software can also help. This stores your login information and, typically, the personal data used in Web forms in an encrypted place on your computer. You can then enter this sensitive data onto Web site forms without retyping it.
If you report unauthorized charges on a debit card within two business days of discovering the problem, your liability is limited to $50 offline and zero for online transactions, Ms. Reynolds says. If you neglect to do that, but report the loss within 60 days of the date your bank sent the statement listing the bogus transactions, your liability is capped at $500 for offline transactions and remains zero online. If you miss those deadlines, however, you could end up in a bigger mess. Ms. Reynolds warned that your liability could be unlimited.
For those who pay bills online, note that, like debit cards, online bank accounts — savings, checking and other personal “asset accounts??? — are covered by the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, so your responsibility for unauthorized transactions is limited depending on when you discover and report fraud.
So even if your computer becomes infected with a malicious program and thieves are able to steal your password and plunder your bank account, you will get your money back if you catch it quickly. Ms. Litan says it’s a good idea to set up automatic bill payments with your bank, as opposed to individual billers like the gas company or the day care provider, because banks and their payment processors are generally better at protecting data than merchants.
