The Student’s Guide to Safe Online Shopping

E-commerce Stores are among the best things to emerge with the ubiquity of the internet. Nowadays, making your next Telly or even T-shirts Purchase is as easy as sitting on a couch somewhere and tapping away. The items you've ordered could usually be shipped directly to your doorsteps if you made that choice.

Ordinarily, before completing your purchase, you'd want to ensure that your preferred online stores have contingencies in place to take care of considerations like refunds and a support team to address any inquiries you might have. Here are some guides to make your whole product purchase process safe for you.

Always Place Orders from a Secure Connection

Hackers and network snoopers tend to constantly lurk around sites where high rates of financial transactions happen daily, as with an E-commerce service. It would be tremendously beneficial if you made appropriate steps to encrypt your data from such agents.

Tools to consider employing in safeguarding your details include proxy servers, VPNs, and, for certain websites, TOR Browsers.

Know the Merchant and Their Reputation

If you prefer to shop online, it's best to stick with well-known and popular merchants. That way, it'll be easy to raise disputes or request for refunds if you are unsatisfied with your purchase. Bruce Taylor, a Cybersecurity expert from PapersOwl, claims: “In general, in order to stay on the safe side of the road, one should choose reputable commercial platforms. Should you ever need to buy custom essays or order your favorite clothes, opt for something you’ve heard positive feedback on.”

Avoid Offers that Seem “Too Good To Be True”

Unless they are highly reputable websites, an E-commerce store that offers products for significantly low is one to be wary of. For one, the items may possibly have been obtained illegally. This is usually the case with stores found on the dark web. Other factors to consider are that you may never actually receive the item you paid for and may just obtain an inferior quality.

Apart from being inferior rip-offs, the store might sometimes have shady clauses in their T&Cs, barring you from returning such items. The best online clothing shopping sites for students would generally never condone this. With such websites, you can typically trust their ability to deliver what you ordered and as quickly as you want. Some other sellers, however, are only interested in obtaining your card information and were never interested in delivering you any product in the first place.

If You're Buying a Gift Card, Read the Terms and Conditions

Are you purchasing a gift card for friends or family? Ensure you review the store's site terms and conditions to ensure there are no hidden nefarious clauses that may cause the person to lose out on their purchase on some technicality.

Don't Use an E-Store That Requires More Information Than Necessary to Make the Sale

Ordinarily, some basic details like your delivery address, phone number, and mailing address would be required before completing your purchase. These are justifiable and okay. Nevertheless, should the store request that you provide unrelated yet personal information like your Social Security Number or a National Identity Number, it's time to look for another merchant.

While most stores would only request your personal data to personalize their services for you and serve you better, some have more nefarious intentions in mind. Such merchants usually do sell your info to advertising companies for sizable profits.

Need to Create a Password for the Site? Make it Unique

Sometimes, online stores may demand that you register with them while shopping. It's up to you to decide whether to do this or not. Cybersecurity experts generally recommend that you need only create a password if you are sure you'll purchase items frequently from the site. And such passwords must be distinct from those you use on other websites. You get an extra layer of protection that way in case of a breach.

Is the Site Secure?

In your bid to shop safely online, you'd also want to ensure your chosen e-commerce website runs on the HTTPS protocol. A way to know this would be to check the address bar on your browser. If it displays: HTTP://… in place of HTTPS://…, your connections are not secured, and you'd want to check out another site on the net.

Use Credit Card or PayPal

It's recommended you stick with Credit Cards or E-Wallets like PayPal in shopping on any unfamiliar online shop. Should you ever need to raise a dispute or request for refunds, auxiliary payment methods like debit cards and direct wire transfers from a bank account do not provide as much security as you'd find with the duo of Credit Cards and PayPal.

In addition, there are measures in place to enhance fraud detection by these companies as they usually partner with independent fraud monitoring firms. One of such is placing a lock on your account if transactions do not match previous patterns associated with the card. For example, if your card is being used in a new location, widely different from the previous ones, you'd frequently be requested to confirm your identity further.

Always Check the Company's Shipping Terms

A common trend among some merchants is to provide great discounts on their products while raising the shipping costs exorbitantly high. It could be financially draining if you purchase items from such stores without checking their shipping costs and policies.

You'd also want to ensure that the attached delivery times are okay with you. And whether or not there are tracking facilities available to you to help out.

Use a Reliable Internet Security Program

To stay protected in the course of online shopping, it's even more important that you surf with well-designed software from security-oriented companies. With the increasing ferocity of cybersecurity attacks, it's ever more important to bank on tools that safeguard their users from phishing attacks or identity theft.

Wrap-up

With the increasing sophistication of fraudulent techniques, it's becoming ever more necessary to bank on secure software programs for activities as ordinary as logging in to social media to save shopping items on an E-Store.

Consider sticking to the guides we've outlined to protect yourself better when making online financial transactions.