It may surprise you to know that the largest growing
store in the world is the Internet as a whole, and the largest e-commerce entity
on the Internet is the United States government who sells the greatest volume
of goods, the most expensive items, and the greatest volume of any online transaction
entity on the net. For more than a decade, the federal government has been transacting
business online, selling cars and homes, hiring people, and managing projects
on the Internet.
Corporations comprise the second largest online commerce
transaction entity. Companies transact purchases that range from very small incidentals,
such as office supplies, to very major transactions, such as carloads of commodities.
Consumers are the third largest online transaction agents. With nearly
80% of all US homes, and higher percentages for rural areas, such as the UP, consumers
purchase vacations, clothing, household goods, sports equipment, gifts, and even
cars and homes.
Is Online Shopping Safe?
Generally
speaking, online shopping is safe, and in fact, it can be safer than calling an
order into a call center, or sending an order form to a catalog company. That
is not to say that there are no scams out there that try or succeed in stealing
credit card numbers, but according to statistics, they are fewer than are the
number of fraud scams occuring with call-in centers.
While we do not profess
to be experts in security, nor are we able to provide you with legal advice, we
have pulled together a group of e-commerce companies that have been conducting
online business transactions for a number of years to ask them for their suggestions
for how to keep safe in online commerce.
Look for the locked key.
When you are asked to enter your credit card and other personal information, look
at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. There you should see a locked padlock
icon. That icon indicates that the web page is located on a secure server, and
that the information is being gathered on that secure server.
Look for
the security certificate. Often times, you will see a Verisign or other certificate
icon at the bottom of the page into which private information is entered. That
certificate is provided by an outside security agent. You can visit that agent's
website to learn about the level of security provided.
PayPal Certification
is a plus. The main advantage to using PayPal for online transactions is that
you are able to enter your private information into your secure PayPal account,
and then pay online with that PayPal account information, rather than use your
personal credit card for the transaction. This level of security is very desirable
to new users of online e-commerce, protects your private information, and allows
a web user to update subscription and other credit card information in one place.
In most instances, a site that has a PayPal Certification adds validity to the
site's ability to process online transactions and can add reassurances that the
company is a valid company and that the transaction is a safe e-com process. The
comment, "in most instances" is made because these stuatios are not
always the case; in some instances, an e-com site can fake their PayPal certification
by simply copying the PayPal certificate to the site. To be sure that the website
has been approved for PayPal transactions, you should be able to click on the
PayPal seal and go to the PayPal website certification. The single most problematic
situation with PayPal is the abundant amount of spam e-mail that ensues after
establishing a PayPal account. Those emails attempt to steal the users access
information for their PayPal account. However, there is a simple way to determine
if the email is valid - open the email, highlight the email address of the sender,
and right click your mouse, then select properties. If the sender's email address
is a valid PayPal address, the properties display will indicate that the email
is from paypal.com, otherwise, it is a spam mai concealed as a PayPal account.
Only use credit cards. While you can use debit cards online, it is much
easier to use credit cards, which provide protection against fraud, make it easier
to dispute a charge, and often times use more intense verification methods.
Join
the millions of Americans who are saving money every day by researching, comparing,
and shopping online. Happy Shopping!
