With just a few clicks on the mouse, E-Commerce allows us to shop online at over thousands of online stores, more options together with detailed description of the product. We can buy almost anything he wants such as books, airline tickets and many more. This is a fun, practical and economic way to shop but sometimes, things may go wrong shopping online. For example, e-mail address being sold to third parties and personal or financial information being stolen. Thus, in order to shop safely and wisely online, we should take the following sensible precautions.
We should always use a true credit card rather than a debit card, check card, or an ATM card to pay for the purchase. This is because if something goes wrong such as someone has used the credit card without authorization, we are protected under federal law for a limited charge to $50. Debit and ATM cards are not protected by the federal law to the extent that credit cards are.
Nowadays, most E-Commerce websites would require us to log-in before placing an order. Keep the log-in password private and never reveal it to anyone. Besides that, we should not use commonly known information such as our social security number, birthdate as a security question in case of forgotten password. This may prevent someone log-in to our account and perform unwanted transaction.
It is encouraged to shop online at secure websites as they use encryption technology to transfer information from our computer to the online merchant’s computer. This technology provides more secure of our personal and financial data such as credit card number for the reason that it scrambles the information in order to prevent hackers from obtaining it. Only authorities with legitimate access privileges have the ability to unscramble the code.
It is a must procedure to provide certain information such as name and address to the web merchant when placing an order. But sometimes, they may ask further information such as occupation, annual income, and leisure lifestyle. This kind of information is used to target us for marketing purposes which can lead to spam, direct mail and telephone solicitations. Therefore, disclose only the bare facts when ordering or leave the site if it insisted for such information.
Additionally, we should never give out our social security number to the web merchant. This is definitely neither a requirement for placing an order at an E-Commerce website nor they have the need and rights to ask for it. By doing so, we can prevent our identities being stolen by imposters. For instance, imposters may use victims’ social security number to apply for new credit cards.
Labels: securities, week4
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