Planning and booking a holiday online is a great way to save money and time, but before you handover your name, credit card details and any other personal or financial information, AVG Australia suggests the following tips to ensure you don’t fall victim to cybercriminal activity.
AVG (AU/NZ)’s safe online holiday booking tips are:
- Be wary of pop ups and unsolicited emails. Once you begin searching you could be distracted by pop up deals and start to receive emails from bogus sources. Don’t click and don’t open unless the messages are from a trusted source.
- Use reputable travel organisations that have industry credentials such as AFTA.
- If you haven’t used the site before, do a Google search on the company to check its bona fides.
- Check on small private operators by giving them a call before you place an online deposit.
- Read the terms and conditions covering refunds, booking changes, deposits and balance due. And if it is an international booking, check which currency you will be making the payment in.
- Any time you are entering personal or financial details, look for the security signs: a padlock symbol in your browser or payment pages that begin with ‘https://’. The ‘s’ denotes security.
As always, the first step to search, surf and email safely is to use a full online protection suite such as AVG Internet Security, or if you use an Android tablet or smartphone, AVG Mobilation.
