Tips to shop online secure and safe
Every individual who shops online always has fears that his or her card/bank details should not fall into the wrong hands. And there are few who plainly refuse to shop online fearing abuse by hackers once they hack into their bank account or credit card details. But given below are few tips that should be followed to shop online in a secure and safe way. These tips involve more common sense than technical precautions.
Tips to be followed for safe and secure online transactions:
• Avoid storing private data in the system: be it a laptop, palmtop or a desktop, one must refrain from storing data like credit card details or personal banking details in their system. The very first place hackers look into for such valuable data is in the mechanical memory of the system. Private data like house address, telephone numbers etc. too must not be stored in the system.
• Creativity: When joining certain online web galleries or gaming or data transfer forum, keep in mind that the details like house address and phone numbers are of no use to them. And these are the places where the hackers first look into as these websites are not that secure. So next time you join such online forums avoid data that have been specified as optional and fill in only the compulsory data required. Besides, every website requires a user id and password. The user id can be the same you are using for your personal emails or can be a name that you specifically like. But it is recommended that the password you use for each of these websites differ. Have a unique password for each of the forum you are registering so that if even one account gets hacked the others are pretty well protected. The password must also be creative. Do not use your birth date or first name or spouse’s name or dogs name as password. Make the passwords as unique as possible with the liberal use of numbers and/or (if allowed) special characters and capital letters. An example of a very strong password is egGs33pinK242524. Now if you use passwords such as these for even your personal email accounts it would become very tough for the hackers to get into it.
• Store information such as user-ids and passwords carefully: now when you begin to use unique ids and passwords for various forums, you may have difficulty remembering the individual user ids and passwords. So make use of a rolodex or a small diary and enter the user-ids and passwords in that along with the name of the website for which they are the specific ones. Also keep these data safe and do not allow access to these to anybody that you do not trust.
• Internet and Online Shopping: keep records of all the transactions that you make so that you can catch mismatch very easily. There are times when credit card companies try to fool you and make payment for certain thing that you would not have used your credit cards. Avoid such mishandling by credit card companies. Try and use debit cards and avoid usage of credit cards as far as possible. This way you also avoid over-extension of your shopping and can restrict yourself to the money that you have in your account, as shopping can be very addictive! Also prefer shopping from major players like Amazon or EBay and avoid the smaller, private shopping portals.
By following these tips meticulously, you can keep your online transactions safe, secure and hassle-free.