With the holiday shopping season in full swing, more and more people are doing their shopping online from their computers which can be safe if you take the precautions to protect yourself from identity theft.  Unfortunately, one of the most important aspects of safe shopping online is making sure that your web browser is up to date and recent studies have shown that 23% of people are not using the current version of their browser, 14.5% are using the previous version while 8.5% of people are using even older versions of their browsers.  Browsers are so critically important because they are the software that your computer uses for email, to connect with social media and to surf the Internet.  Identity thieves are constantly exploiting vulnerabilities in browsers and browser manufacturers are just as constantly making adjustments to their products to close these vulnerabilities, however, their efforts are only successful if users download and install the updates.

TIPS

In order to prevent attacks from identity thieves through vulnerabilities in your browser, you should make sure that you always install the latest patches and updates.  The easiest way to do this is by having your computer automatically install updates whenever they are released so you do not affirmatively have to do anything to achieve the maximum protection.