RISKS INVOLVED WHEN SHOPPING ONLINE

One of the coolest capabilities enabled by the Internet is that when you’re using it, you’re
not bound by geographical location.

This is especially handy when you’re shopping. Before
the Internet, you were pretty much stuck with
the selection and prices in the stores around your home. Now, you can shop anywhere,
anytime, and you can be competitive about it.

Of course, there are some risks that come with shopping online, too. Although identity theft is
more common in the real world, it still happens online pretty frequently, as does
credit card fraud. So staying safe while you’re
shopping online is paramount. Here are five
tips for shopping safely online:
Price and selection are two of the best benefits to shopping online. But don’t let the benefits lull you into complacency. Take the time to
shop securely, and use caution with the sites that you choose to shop on.

Then, not only can
you find great deals, but you can do it without the worry that your identity will be stolen in the process.

Identity Theft
Choose Credit Over Debit:

You probably don’t often hear advice to use a credit card
instead of a debit card or cash, but if you can do it responsibly, you absolutely should.
Credit cards offer protection from identity theft that debit cards don’t.
For example, with a credit card, your liability for fraudulent charges caps at $50
as long as you report the fraud within 30 or 60 days (depending on the company).
However, if you’re using your debit card online and someone gains access to it, they can clean out your checking account before
you even learn there’s a problem. It’s likely you’ll get part of that money back, but
possible that it can take a while, and that you won’t get it all. So, use a credit card instead and pay the bill off monthly.

Disposable Is Better:

Even better than using a credit card is to use a disposable credit card. Disposable credit cards work just like most gift cards. You add a specified
dollar amount to the card, and it’s good until that is gone. Once it’s gone, you can
add more, or purchase a new one. And both Visa and American Express now offer these
cards in varying amounts, so they’re easy to
get hold of. The bonus is that if the number
from a disposable credit card is stolen, it’s
anonymous, and criminals can’t gain access
to anything more than the dollar amount
that’s still available on the card.
Verify Website Security: The variety that’s available when shopping online can be dizzying, but it doesn’t stop at just the
products and prices that are available online.
There are also different levels of security that are available online, and you want to be aware of them. Some online web sites don’t
offer secure shopping. That means that savvy
criminals can capture everything that you
enter onto a form on those sites, including
your personal and credit information. If you’re going to shop online, limit yourself to
secure sites. You can tell if a site is secure by the URL. A secure web site starts with HTTPS:// instead of HTTP://. Secure sites will
also have a small lock icon in the lower right corner of the screen.

Don’t Shop Publically:

If you plan to do any shopping online, do it at home. At home, you can shop in your pajamas (or nekkid) and you can do it any time of the day or
night. You also know who accesses your computer at
home. If you’re using a public
computer—at the library, at a cyber
café, or at work—to do your shopping, you
have no control over who might be using that computer as well. You also don’t have
any control over what kind of spyware or
malware might be infecting that computer.
So, just don’t do it. Shop at home. It’s much safer.

Don’t Store Information Elsewhere:

Many shopping sites, even the major ones, offer
you the ability to save your credit card information on their servers to speed the shopping process. Think OLX.com’s
OneClick shopping. It’s definitely faster, but there are some risks to maintaining your
personal information elsewhere. If a company that you’re shopping with has a data breach, your personal information
could be put at risk. It takes a little longer, but instead of storing your information on some server that you have no control over,
just enter it yourself each time you shop.