Tampa shopping online is probably the best investment you could do when it’s the holidays and you need to buy gifts for your families and friends. You don’t need to spend time in the mall if that’s not your cup of tea and you don’t need to spend hours looking for the perfect gift and losing precious hours of sleep.
It’s the golden age for online shopping, but it does not come perfectly. We are still worried about many things such as phishing, identity theft, and credit card fraud.
Use familiar websites
If you use the search engine, there’s a strong chance that you’ll get routed to the wrong sites because Google can’t actually detect wrong websites, just the wrong SEO used. If the sites used the correct SEO strategy, they will likely be on the first page of the search engine result.
Instead, go directly to the correct site by typing the address such as www.amazon.com or www.macys.com. Most major retail stores have their own online shops, anyway. You are likely to get better deals with these large corporations.
Look for the lock
Never give your credit card details to a website that has no SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption installed. You will know if that is the right website because the address will start with an HTTPS:// (instead of HTTP://) and there will be an icon of a locked padlock beside the address bar. PayPal is still the safest way to use your credit card, so you may want to check that out.
Do not give personal details
No website or online store will ask for your full social security number or even your birthday to do business. But combined with your credit card number, if the bad guys get your birthday and your social security number, you may be facing a serious problem.
Protect your PC
No matter where you are doing the transaction from—your laptop or your smartphones—make sure they are secured by an anti-virus program. Buying the software may be expensive, but it’s an expense you must take if you want to continue enjoying online shopping.
Use strong passwords
Do not use crackable passwords such as your birthday and other important dates in your life. Since you will be signing up for a lot of sites, make sure to create a different password for each one, or customize your password for each website.