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'Tis the season for safe holiday shopping

9 Nov 2009

While recent reports don't predict a major recovery for retailers this holiday season, the outlook for e-commerce sites is slightly more optimistic: 2009 will post an 18% increase in online holiday shopping over last year, according to Information Resources. For many consumers, though, the convenience of online shopping comes with a hefty price: their identity.

Holidays are when the majority of online identity theft problems occur, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a nationally recognised expert on identity theft prevention. This is especially disconcerting considering that nearly 10 million Americans were victims of ID theft in 2008 and more than 200 million files have been exposed by data breaches in 2009 to date, according to the Javelin Strategy & Research Center.

The number of identity theft victims is likely to rise this year. There is little doubt that fraudsters can - and will - take advantage of increased shopping activity during the holiday season to prey on online shoppers who may not take precautions to protect themselves.

The real key to effective protection is to prevent the transmission of sensitive information in the first place. The word "prevention" is often used to describe benefits provided by security products; however, many products that claim to prevent identity theft do not prevent consumers' sensitive information from being transmitted and stored in databases - where it is most vulnerable to theft and fraud.

Read the full article here.