More and more of the global transactions are taking place on the web nowadays, and we’re all painfully aware of the fact that, unfortunately, there are people out there looking to pray upon innocent shoppers thinking they’re giving their money to trusted, reliable online vendors when in fact it’s going into the pocket of ‘scammers.’
To counter this, online retailers are now displaying ‘safe’ logos such as the padlock on their card entry pages, showing buyers that the site they’re giving their bank details and money to is trustworthy. But how do you judge whether or not the site you’re buying from is reliable?
There are a number of different things you can keep an eye out for, including:
Secure Sockets Layering (SSL)
There are many different kinds of online security packages in place around the web, and SSL is just one of those. It encrypts the credit card numbers that you enter into the checkout section of a site, meaning that the details are communicated with your bank, but no physical person and they are essentially “jumbled” and blocked so nobody can steal them and use them for unfair means.
Secure Electronic Transaction (SET)
Sites such as PayPal allow users to enter their bank details safely and securely, and many e-commerce sites link up with it, allowing them to pay essentially transfer the money from their account through the sites rather than giving their bank details to yet another website. This works in a similar way to electronic card readers you see in shops, (find out more about these and how they work from the Capital Processing Network).
Passwords
If you use a number of different accounts that require passwords, it makes a great deal of sense to ensure that they are all different. If you use the same password for, for example, your email, banking, social networking and online grocery shopping sites, then it’s very easy for someone to crack that one password and have access to all of your details. It can make it confusing if you have many different access codes, it’s true, but it’s better to be safe and secure than sorry! It’s often best to make your password a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols to make it especially hard to crack.
Log-Out
Always ensure that you log out after doing anything online. If you’ve needed to enter a password to get access to any site – email, social network, shopping, whatever it may be – as this would prevent any other users from instantly accessing your account details.
