Online shopping.  To some, this is the only way to go (yours truly) and for others these words bring forth images of masked internet bandits, stealing their credit card numbers and identity.  The truth is, there are risks in everything we do, but with a few words of wisdom and a few minutes of your time, you can feel at ease with internet shopping and save a boatload of money in the process.

First and foremost, be careful.  There are some very easy ways to shop safely on the world wide web:

1) Stick with large companies – If you stay on Main Street USA and shop the big companies like Target.com, Amazon.com, Buy.com, etc. you are already ahead of the game.  These large businesses have spent tons of money on protecting you (their cash cows) from internet fraud.  They are not going to take any chances.

2) Always go to sites directly – Even if you receive an email from Target, stating that they have the deal of a lifetime, don’t follow the link.  Instead, open up your browser and go to Target.com yourself.  You will be able to find the same deal on their web site or they will provide you with a code of some sort to get these fantastic deals.  It doesn’t take much for a smart criminal to create a fake web page that looks just like the real thing, which leads us to number 3.

3) Look for the “s” – This is the most important rule of all.  If you are going to enter your credit card information on a web site, there is one sure-fire way of knowing you are shopping safely.  Look up in the address bar and make sure that the URL, for the page you are on, starts with “https://“  That “s” means secure.   This technology was invented to scramble sensitive information, such as your credit card number, so that it can be read only by the merchant you are dealing with and your credit card issuer. This ensures that your payment information cannot be read by anyone else or changed along the way.

4) Look for the lock – Somewhere in your browser (depends on company and version), you will find a lock icon to indicate if a site is secure or not.  Typically the icon will appear in the bottom right hand corner and will only come up when you get to the checkout portion of your shopping.  This icon will ALWAYS be a part of the browser and not a part of the web page itself.

Lock Icon Examples - Explorer and Firefox

Check back often, as we will soon be tackling subjects like “Using Coupons Online” and “Best Web Sites for Saving Money.”  As always, we want to make your PC a useful tool.  What’s more useful than saving you a ton of money?

Tags: Lock, Safe Shopping, Security, URL

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Firefox, Online Shopping, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.