They say that you can never have too much good advice. So in addition to the excellent set of Safe Holiday Shopping Tips we provided last week, here are three more simple rules of the road for safe and worry-free online experience this holiday season.

1.  You can do more online and through mobile; just don’t do it differently. Doing more of what you normally do isn’t as much a risk as doing different things than you normally do. Try not to change your actual behavior, even though you’re doing more shopping and browsing online and through mobile.  The less you stray from your normal habits, then the less likely you’ll encounter malicious sites, apps, or messages, and the less you’ll fall victim to fraud and other scams.
2.  Scrutinize unusual messages. Be wary when receiving unsolicited or odd messages – even from people you know – and be especially wary if you do decide to act on them. Just like email viruses used to troll your address books, today’s malware will access your social networks. An odd message through your social network may well mean that your friend has been hacked. There will be plenty of scams and attacks that purport to be great last-minute deals, fake holiday cards that ask you to forward along to all your Facebook friends, confirmations or verifications for transactions you never made, and even fake warning messages about scams to avoid. All of these are just different attempts to get you to click on a link.
3.  Don’t log in on a page you got to from an outside link. If a message takes you to a login page for a service that you use, look closely at the URL before entering your credentials. Better yet: just go to the site using your bookmarks or standard “www.xyz.com” address rather than signing in on the page you got to from a link.