With Cyber Monday right around the corner, consumers are being warned to keep an eye out for online scams as the holiday shopping season gets underway. NY1's Susan Jhun filed the following "NY1 For You" report.

It's a great time to find good deals online but it's also primetime for scam artists.

"Before you start shopping on Cyber Monday, you have a little bit of time right now. Go out, buy security software, install it on your computer, run windows update, update all of the settings on your computer, make sure that everything is up to date and that everything is secure so that when you do go to websites, and if there’s any chance of malware being dropped on your computer, you’re blocked. You’re protected," said PCMag.com Editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff.

Another basic tip, before you buy at a site, look for an SSL, or secure socket layer, which is indicated by a closed little lock at the bottom of your browser. That means you’re in a secure situation.
For an extra layer of security, a great way to protect your personal information is to purchase a special credit card for holiday use.

"You can actually use a one-time use credit card. I think this is a great way to go. PayPal is a site that lets you pay online but it also will let you create these one-time only credit cards. So you have your actual credit card with PayPal, then it gives you a subnumber that you can give out, and that will connect to them and connect to your credit card. So then once you’ve made the purchase, that’s gone. If you want to use it for all of your online purchases, you can do so and you actually just set the expiration dates," Ulanoff said.

If you're not interested in getting one of those, then choose one of your credit cards you can easily track and do all of your holiday shopping with that card. Also, never respond to unsolicited offers.

"If you’re getting a lot of stuff delivered to your email that’s about great deals, go visit the site directly through your browser. Don’t follow the links because this is a time where we’re going to get a lot of malware and a lot of spam and a lot of phishes into our email that are going to be all about shopping for great deals," Ulanoff said.

Even after you verify a site is real, you still need to check its reputation. You can do that by reading ratings and reviews and it's always smart to check on a company's record with The Better Business Bureau.