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Having Fun With Internet Shopping
- By Super Admin
- Published 12/27/2007
- Business , Fashion , Technology
- Unrated
Internet shopping is fantastic, it is reliable, can be done at the
comfort of your chair/desk, and cuts out the hassle associated with
shopping.
Unfortunately, there is a real danger of using online shopping, and that is credit card fraud. With a degree of common sense, and some knowledge so as to look out for potential weak areas and traps lurking in the background you can shop online without worry.
The online thief’s best friend is laziness and his second is ignorance. Come on admit it, how many of us fall into the trap of using the same password, the same username across the net? Perhaps its something memorable, a pets name, a birthday etc. As soon as a thief has this information, he can subsequently gain access to your more sensitive data. Quite scary isn’t it? Simple things, such as mixing upper case and lower case letters with random characters and numbers will make your password much much more secure. It goes without saying the longer your password, the more secure as well.
I cannot stress enough however, how crucial it is for you to alter your password every time. In effect, the thief
has to crack open a safe
every time, whereas having one universal password is like handing him
the combination. Make sure to buy only from reputable and recognised
vendors, and ensure that they have encryption technology. Regardless of
what browser you use, you can check to see if a website (the website
you currently have opened in the browser) uses encryption technology by
looking out for a small padlock icon. If you hover your mouse over this
icon, you can then get a series of details and facts about the
particular encryption.
Be on the lookout for phishing scams and emails. They may differ in their realism and persuasiveness, but all will claim to be from your bank or paypal, claiming they need to confirm your security word, or password etc. A lot of these scam emails are highly organised, making use of headers, graphics and logos from the official sites making them much more realistic and thus harder to detect. Read such emails carefully, and if they have misspellings, poor punctuation or grammar then typically they are likely to be fake.
Fortunately, email services such as hotmail and yahoo now have free, built in phishing detectors which are highly effective, and simply marking them as junk straight away.
Unfortunately, there is a real danger of using online shopping, and that is credit card fraud. With a degree of common sense, and some knowledge so as to look out for potential weak areas and traps lurking in the background you can shop online without worry.
The online thief’s best friend is laziness and his second is ignorance. Come on admit it, how many of us fall into the trap of using the same password, the same username across the net? Perhaps its something memorable, a pets name, a birthday etc. As soon as a thief has this information, he can subsequently gain access to your more sensitive data. Quite scary isn’t it? Simple things, such as mixing upper case and lower case letters with random characters and numbers will make your password much much more secure. It goes without saying the longer your password, the more secure as well.
I cannot stress enough however, how crucial it is for you to alter your password every time. In effect, the thief
Be on the lookout for phishing scams and emails. They may differ in their realism and persuasiveness, but all will claim to be from your bank or paypal, claiming they need to confirm your security word, or password etc. A lot of these scam emails are highly organised, making use of headers, graphics and logos from the official sites making them much more realistic and thus harder to detect. Read such emails carefully, and if they have misspellings, poor punctuation or grammar then typically they are likely to be fake.
Fortunately, email services such as hotmail and yahoo now have free, built in phishing detectors which are highly effective, and simply marking them as junk straight away.