We guide you through what you need to know to shop online safely. Millions of people buy and sell goods over the Internet every day without any problems. Unfortuntely not every transaction will go smoothly and some will find their goods aren’t what they expect, or they don’t turn up or worse still, they fall victim to Credit Card fraud. However there are a number of steps you can take to minimise the risk and ensure that your transaction goes smoothly.
The to-buy.co.uk guide to secure shopping online will help you to buy safely.
Buying Online Safely
The following tips give you some pointers to ensure a safe online shopping experience:
- Buy from recognised stores. There are many unscrupulous retailers who are able to set up dummy shop sites very quickly. More often than not they will be offering you goods at prices that are far too good to be true . Well the old adage is worth remembering – if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!
- If you need to buy from a store you haven’t heard of before, that’s OK, I am all for giving small businesses a break and have had many great dealings with smaller sites. However there are a few things you can do to check out the shop first:
- Check out their contact details. A legitimate business will provide an address and contact telephone number. Why not give them a ring if you have doubts.
- Try typing their name into a search engine, or check out a consumer forum. What do other people say about the company? Note that you should always take consumer reviews with a pinch of salt, if you search long enough you will always find one or two negative comments. So look at the bigger picture.
- Research the site, you can look up who and when the site was setup through a “whois” lookup. If the store is claiming to be British but hosted in China or Russia you might want to investigate further. If the store claims to have been online for 10 years but the domain was registered two weeks ago then you should again be very cautious!
- Use complex passwords. Security experts are rarely suprised when password leaks show how poorly selected passwords are. Pick a random combination of numbers, letters and symbols.
What else can you do to protect yourself when shopping online?
So above we talk about the online buying process, but here are some more general tips to keep secure:
- Make sure your PC is secure and your anti-virus software is up to date. Criminals are continuously trying to find ways to capture personal information from our computers. It is therefore critical that your operating system is kept patched and up to date, and you have comprehensive security software installed.
- Don’t just rely on anti-virus software. New viruses are being released all the time so you need to be careful when browsing the Internet. This doesn’t have to be restrictive, simply stick to known sites and be very careful when downloading anything, even if it appears to be sent from a friend.
- Buy with a Credit Card. Under UK law the Credit Card company has certain responsabilities and can help resolve issues where goods have not turned up or are not as described.
- Use a Credit Card that provides Identity Fraud protection. I don’t want to add to the scaremongering out there but sadly Identity Thefy does happen. Talk to your card provider in advance to see what they might do in this situation, some come with better protection than others and it is better to know where you stand before it happens.
Unfortunately there will always be a small risk to buying online but this advice will go some way to minimising this. We also recommend speaking to your retailer or card provider for further information.