Tips to shop safely on the internet

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday March 29, 2014 at 12:45:36:

Nowadays, shopping through the internet is one of the cool ways purchase things.

Internet shopping allows you to buy items over the internet, pay with your debit/credit card and get the item delivered to your address. You can even choose to pay cash on delivery.

There are many online shops that Nigerians now have access to such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Jumia and Konga with vast range of products to choose from, at cheaper cost.

Inasmuch as there many genuine shopping sites for online buying of items, there are also many fake sites that pose as shopping Sites, just to defraud innocent people pf there hard earned cash. Let’s looks at some safety tips for shopping online to avoid being scammed by fraudulent shopping sites.

- Keep your personal details secret: Don't even tell your family members your log in details and password or even your billing details for shopping on a particular website. You can send them a gift card if they so desire to buy something for themselves or you can buy them a specific gift. Keep your personal details safe

- Make use of a private internet service: Most public internet services are not that safe for online shopping as they can be easily hacked. Things like keyboard loggers and remote hacking tools can easily be used to copy your details.

- Ensure you have an antivirus software installed: If your computer doesn't have an antivirus, you may not be able to notice the creepy things that happen in your computer background and that could include software that may be stealing your data.

- Check for Reviews: The first thing to check for in an online shopping site is not the goods on display or the prize discounts, because these two factors can be deceiving. Check to know how genuine the site is, the best way to go about it, is to use Google to check for other people’s review about the site. Type the name of the site and scam in the Google search box. It will bring out reviews from people who had used the sites, and if it’s a scam site, it will be confirmed from their reviews.

- Use your Common sense: If the prize of an item is ridiculously cheap or too good to be true, common sense should tell you that it is a scam.