The older generation of online shoppers happen to be the biggest prey for hackers who are looking to steal personal information. However, they are becoming a lot more perceptive and Char Yarema is a prime example of how perception could help in situations that could end up costing you a lot of money.

Yarema was shopping on a website and had already filled out a checkout form before noticing that the little padlock, that many of us might take for granted, was nonexistent on the site, according to a CNET report. Luckily for Yarema, her son Jonathan works for Trustwave, a cybersecurity firm. This might explain while at the age of 67 she was a bit more perceptive. Chances are her son warned her of sites like that or just cautioned her to be a bit more perceptive about the websites she visits.

“He took a look at the code behind the suspicious website and it turned out hackers behind a Russian website were receiving a copy of everything his mom typed into the checkout form,” according to the report.

“That included her credit card information, which Char immediately canceled. Mom and son declined to name the retailer.”

Believe it or not the padlock is a lesson in security for many. When there is a padlock inscription on sites, it means that any information you enter is scrambled through an encryption method that keeps all of your personal information safe from hackers. There are also ways in which the padlocks notify you as to whether or not their method of encryption has been broken, for instance, the report claims that if the padlock is yellow or red then there are issues with the encryption on the site that you are visiting.

Moral of the story is, we all might want to take this little signs more seriously next time we’re purchasing items off the internet, you never know who is out to get you.

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