With the gift-giving season just around the corner, shoppers looking for good deals are getting savier, but so are holiday scammers.

One in three Americans say they've fallen prey to an online shopping scam.

Just last year, scams involving items that were either counterfeit or never delivered cost people more than $700 million.

Ali Rogan explores these scams with Alyssa Abdullah, Deputy Chief Security Officer for MasterCard.

Thank you so much for being here.

What are some of the most common holiday scams that people should be looking out for?

The most common holiday scams are big flashy ads, the big discounts.

A lot of times those are things we need to think about.

Another common holiday scam may be charitable websites.

We're in a time where people are in the season of giving.

And so you might want to be careful and make sure you verify the website,

verify the charity to make sure you verify the website, verify the charity,

to make sure the charity is a verified charity before you actually donate.

What can people do to make sure those shopping sites, those charity sites are legitimate?

So the first thing I tell people to do is take a beat.

Take a pause.

Go and do your own research on a website. Easiest thing to do.

Then you can go and say, I'm going to go on the platform. You need to actually verify the platform as well.

Sometimes the website may be look good. The charity may sound right, but the platform is a little shaky.

So you need to verify all of those things.

I look at the URL to make sure words are spelled right.

If you're going to make a payment, you want to use HTPS.

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