Safety tips for online shopping

Credit card fraud seems to be everywhere, and thieves love to use the Internet to steal people’s credit card information because of the anonymity it provides. Many consumers think that the only way to protect themselves is to simply avoid shopping online altogether. While that’s one way to prevent credit card information from being stolen, it also means you’ll never be able to shop online again. The online marketplace for goods and services is growing at a rapid rate because consumers know they can quickly find the best deals when they shop online. Simply by not shopping online anymore, one would be giving up all these great deals. Using this method to avoid credit card fraud is like deciding not to fly again to avoid terrorists. True, one would not become a victim of any terrorist plot involving airplanes, but that also means having to deal with the inconvenience of not being able to fly when traveling. Like anything else in life, the key is not to avoid the problem, but rather to understand the problem and adopt a smart strategy to minimize the risk of falling victim to credit card fraud while shopping online.

First, let’s talk about the steps one can take if credit card fraud has already occurred. There is no need to panic. Once a cardholder reports that their credit card information has been compromised, the credit card company will not hold the cardholder liable for any fraudulent charges, including charges made before reporting the information. of the credit card has been stolen. The credit card company will close that card for no more use and issue a new card in about a week or two, but this is still an inconvenience most people would rather not have to deal with, if possible.

Online shoppers could then use Google’s Safe Browsing tool to check if a website is safe to visit, assuming one trusts Google, of course. This tool will report if a website is suspicious or not, when Google last scanned it, if the website did anything suspicious in the past, and will report if it is linked to any suspicious website even if the site itself is not doing anything suspicious. nothing suspicious. To see if a website is safe, simply copy and paste “http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=” into your browser’s address field, and then add the URL of the site you want to visit. For example, for a company website, simply enter “http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=websiteurlhere.com” in the address bar of the browser being used. Once entered, Google’s tool will display a simple half-page report on whether or not the site in question is actually safe.

Another layer of protection that can be used when shopping online is to use trusted third-party payment methods. Almost everyone has heard of PayPal. They are probably the most used third-party payment method in the world. They allow customers to pay for goods and services through them. For example, this means that when a customer buys something, he is not paying directly to the website he is buying from. She pays the amount due to PayPal, and then PayPal pays the merchant, which means the merchant never sees her credit card information, and her credit card information was never transmitted over the Internet during this transaction. It doesn’t matter if the customer buys from one website or a hundred websites. As long as a third-party payment method was used, the credit card information was never transmitted, so that information isn’t floating around online on every website a purchase was made on. Other third-party payment methods similar to PayPal include Google Wallet and Amazon Payments.

Armed with this information, online shoppers can now ensure that the websites they visit are safe to shop in and also avoid entering sensitive information when shopping. So there’s no need to pass up all the great deals when shopping online for fear of having your credit card information stolen.