With all the great deals in online shopping Cyber Monday brings, there will, of course, be some scam sites out to steal your money.
"It's really important that if you are shopping from sites that you don't typically shop at, say the big name brands that you are used to shopping at, know who you are shopping with," said Tim Johnston with the Better Business Bureau.
If you aren't sure about a site, you can always check it on the Better Business Bureau's scam tracker website or at lookup.icann.org.
Another thing to watch out for is the returns and exchanges on each site, as some may not offer any and send you incorrect items.
When you are taking a break from online shopping and start browsing social media, you may start to see adds pop up for the products you were just looking at. Officials say these links could lead you fake or scam sites as well.
"Scam artist have the same tools that legitimate marketers do to track you and follow you and know what you're looking for and what your interests are, and they will pop up those adds at great prices and that's what really entices people to follow through,” said Johnston. "Be aware that that extra low price is one of those tools that scam artists are going to use to draw you in."
When it comes to shopping, we all want the best deal, but sometimes the old adage is true...
"If the deal is too good to be true, odds are it is too good to be true," said Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam. Online scams are something the Sheriff’s office is seeing more and more of. "We have a detective that specializes in cyber type security, we work with some federal partners in town as well, because it is a growing and unfortunately criminal trend."
Another thing to look out for comes towards the end of the purchase, when you put in your payment information. You always want to look for the "s" in https, as well as this lock icon in address bar.
“If it doesn't have that S or that lock icon, then you are just putting it out there for everybody to see," said Johnston.
And of course, change up your passwords for each site, making sure they are not the same ones you use for any banking or credit card logins.
"Don't use the same passwords, don't use your name or last name, your child's name," said Sheriff Balaam.
