Concerned about making online purchases? All you need do is follow simple online shopping safety tips. By seeing best practices, knowing what not to do, and being able to recognize when a site is not safe, you can set yourself up for online shopping success. When you stop following those tips, when you choose to ignore the warning signs, then you are putting yourself at risk of having your identity stolen.
- Is Online Shopping Safe?
- Tips for Online Shopping
- Safe Online Shopping Sites
With best practices, online shopping can be just as safe, if not safer, than actual shopping. There are many measures put in place to make sure that your information is secure and used only for the specific purchase that you are making. It is when you start using sites that do not have these measures in place, and their security is compromised, or you find a site that is not actually selling anything, but is just a front to get payment information from people, that you are really running a risk.
As far as online shopping safety tips go, start by just using your common sense. If the site is asking for more online shopping information than you are accustomed to giving out, that might be a sign. If you are buying a dvd, why would the site need your social security number? If you are paying by credit card, you should not need to put in a bank routing and account number, right? Learn to recognize when the information being requested is extraneous, and can be compromising.
A great way to learn what a site should be asking for is to check the tried-and-true, trustworthy online markets. Go through a purchase process in Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Walmart online. Learn to recognize just what a site needs in order to complete your purchase, and anything out of the norm should set off a red flag for you.
Those sites mentioned above are completely safe. Any big name will most likely be safe for you to use. Another good sign is if the site has a little lock icon appear right before its name in your address bar. And the really good sites will have some sort of safe shopping guarantee on their pages as well. A common security company used is Verisign. If you see that stamp of approval, you can be sure that it is much safer than other sites.
Those are just a few, simple online shopping safety tips. You need not live your life in fear of purchasing things online. Just play it smart. If you have successfully purchased something from a site before, you can buy again from that sire with confidence. If it is a new and foreign site to you, be wary, look for any red flags, and be ready to exit if anything seems overly suspicious. You can always find reviews of online markets as well, to see how people have experienced them prior to you.