Saturday, June 7, 2008

Shopping online? 5 tips for a safer experience

Shopping on-line has several advantages, such as speed and convenience, to name just 2. If you follow these five tips, however, you can add a third: safety. Safety is critical, considering there was an calculable $2 billion of on-line business loss in 2006 due to safety issues.

~ Look for visual cues
Prominent misspellings and frequent grammatical errors are signs that an internet site can be dishonest . You can additionally seek for straightforward visual cues that show that the positioning is echt and guarded.
Such cues include a trust mark such as the VeriSign Secured Seal, or a green address bar in high-security browsers such as net somebody seven and shortly, Firefox 3 and Opera.
Colour-coded address bars are a feature of Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, which give supplemental info a few website's credibleness.
Other visual cues embrace a padlock icon in either the lower or higher right-hand corner of the screen and https:// in the browser; each of those indicate the positioning is secured.

~ Check out two-factor authentication
A growing number of web sites are acceptive a second variety of user authentication that comes from physical devices like a token, credit-card form issue, a USB drive, or even your telephone.
According to Fran Rosch, vice president of VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Services, "Each device provides users with a dynamic one-time arcanum that should be entered into a login page additionally to their user name and password. The extra layer of security prevents potential fraudsters from accessing personal accounts that ar accessed by a straightforward user name and arcanum."

~ Compare the checkout experience to those of well-known sites and look for anomalies
Most well-run websites like Amazon or eBay send order confirmation and shipping confirmation emails and permit you to print out confirmations of your orders. Beware of straightforward forms that supply no confirmation that you just entered or ordered something.

~ Know your vendor
Read their ratings and reviews from alternative customers and take red flags seriously. Also build positive you've got a way of contacting them -- seek for a sign or address. Finally, try to conclude wherever the corporate relies in their "About us" section.

~ Pay attention to the order form
The site shouldn't evoke quite your name, shipping address, billing address, credit card type and variety, or expiration date. Online stores have no business inquiring for social insurance numbers or bank routing numbers.

Finally, demand that the sites you do business with provide you with correct security measures to safeguard their most respected quality -- you, the customer.

Online fraud is a growing downside. Fortunately, you can seek for cues provided by trust marks or Extended Validation SSL, for example, which shows that the website you're visiting is authentic.

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