Online shopping provides the convenience mall shopping couldn’t such as avoiding heavy traffic and the rush of people in stores. With just a click of a mouse and the item will be delivered at your doorstep in just a few days.

But there are risks, of course. Any type of information you provide online is in danger of being compromised or worse, stolen and sold in the dark web.

Security firm Kaspersky Lab recently released its report “From festive fun to password panic: Managing money online this Christmas” where it found out that from the 12,448 consumers surveyed in 22 countries, “majority of them (93 percent) are aware of financial cyber threats and that 32 percent have had their financial credentials fall into the wrong hands.” From this 32 percent, over a quarter of 26 percent of them were unable to recover their lost money.

E-commerce sites are sprouting like mushrooms these days and consumers could hardly keep track of which e-tailers did they give out their information such as credit or debit card credentials. According to Kaspersky, more than half of people surveyed (54 percent) are most worried about their financial credentials being accessed by cybercriminals. However, a third (36 percent) of respondents have forgotten or not even tried to remember the websites and apps where they have shared their financial details.

Possibly one of the worst a consumer can do is store payment or even bank details in devices (which can be stolen) but the survey found out that 1 in 5 or 20 percent of those surveyed actually do it. It is easy to just cut and paste those details when making online or mobile transactions.

One of the factors that draw people to shopping online is the rewards and loyalty programs that they can use later on, yes, to shop more. The availability of several payment methods aside from credit cards also encourages shoppers to choose the less stressful shopping through various websites or mobile apps. This has helped to raise the popularity of contactless device payments, such as PayPass and Apple Pay, with a third of shoppers (31 percent) using them regularly.

“The end of the year and the holiday season is a wonderful time when people are buying presents for their families and friends,” said Marina Titova, head of Consumer Product Marketing at Kaspersky Lab. “But no one wants to have this time spoiled by losing money through unsafe transactions or online fraud. We should all be very attentive to our financial data and online payments, taking care to avoid putting our bank card credentials on untrusted websites or making payments from unsecured devices.”