We have a few suggestions as to how to enhance the safety of buying items online…

First of all, make sure your computer is protected from malware such as viruses, trojans and key-loggers. How to do that? Check out our page Minimum Safe PC.

Secondly, use a little common sense about the sites you buy from, and it the deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

For enhanced security we recommend the following options:
• Citibank provides a way to use virtual credit card numbers, a number that is only good for one use. Nobody can use that number to make another purchase. Citibank provides you with a slick little utility that creates a a unique credit card number for each transaction. Type in your user name and password, and in another click or two you’ll have a unique credit card number. And they it provides a couple of ways to input the number in the purchasing form without having to type it. Or you may drag and drop the unique credit card number onto the credit card form. This is much easier than typing in the credit card number. The utility also provides easy access to a history of numbers used.
• Another way to enhance the security of online purchases is to use PayPal. More and more online sellers offer PayPal as a payment option. You may use a credit card to buy through PayPal. (You don’t even have to be a PayPal member to do this). The cool thing, security wise is that when you use your credit card to buy through PayPal, PayPal does not send your credit card number or the name of your bank to the payee.

So, get that computer properly secured, use a secure means of payment, use a little common sense, and make progress towardsleaving internet insecurity behind.

- Practice Safe Computing -

Posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 6:34 PM and filed under All Posts, Safe e-Commerce. You can follow any responses to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or you may trackback from your own site.