Is online shopping safe? For the most part, yes, so you can put to bed your worries that every time you enter your credit card information, a hacker is watching and rubbing his or her hands together gleefully. Over 60% of consumers shop online, and most experiences are positive and safe.
That said, you need to be a smart consumer, like with anything. If you never check your restaurant bill, you might not realize the same place is charging you for an extra drink every time you visit. Similarly, you need to stay aware when you are shopping online in order to keep both your personal and financial information safe. Here is our three point guide to online shopping safety.
1. Look for a Secured Site
Did you know that when a website starts with https rather than http, this indicates it is a secure site? Another way to judge security easily is to look for the padlock icon in the top right of the browser. If you want safe online shopping, these two indicators are key.
2. Choose Established, Reliable Sites
This is less hard to quantify, but scam sites tend to be quickly produced websites that are there to dupe people rather than convince everyone of a real product. Be wary of a site that offers little information about itself, has a lot of broken links and images, or contains a lot of misspellings for something they supposedly specialize in. Most sites process cards through third parties, so if you are not sure about the legitimacy of the site, check up on what company is handling their transactions.
3. Check Out Reviews
Every year, there are 556 million victims of cyber crime. Several online shopping risks can be avoided by doing some simply and easy research before entering their card information. Want to know if the company is trustworthy? Try googling iterations of it, such as, Robin Plumbing Scam, Robin Plumbing Review, etc., in order to get a feel for what the online community is saying about the quality of the products or services. Many scams could be avoided by using this checking resource.
What do you think are the biggest online shopping risks, and how do you protect yourself against them? Let us know in the comments!