Shopping Online Protect Yourself

These days, there are great bargains to be found by shopping
online. Many items that previously were only available in stores
are now being bought and sold online every day. Books, cds, DVDs
and electronics are all growing in popularity as online
purchases. Then there are things like flights, hotel bookings,
car rentals and the like that are which are well established in
the online shopping world. More and more stores are putting up
websites that allow you to make online orders and even
supermarkets now let you do your grocery shopping online and
they'll deliver the goods to your door.

Added to this growth in stores and other big business websites,
there are also millions of small traders offering you goods
online too. Online auction sites such as ebay are experiencing
phenomenal success. These types of purchases however carry the
risk that you do not really know who you are dealing with but
you have to give them sensitive financial information in order
to pay for your purchases. You are forced to choose between
buying from small sellers and then trust them with your card
details, or forgo the opportunities they offer and deal only
with large and trusted names.

Payment Sites

This problem has been recognised and that is why it is now
possible to shop online from lots of small sellers while
maintaining your privacy and keeping your financial information
secure. There are payment sites with the most popular probably
being paypal, that are set up specifically to deal with issues
like these. Indeed, paypal is now owned by ebay, which shows the
link in importance between the two services offered by these
companies.

What websites like paypal allow you to do is pay open an online
account for free. You can then transfer money into your account
using a standard credit card payment procedure. The advantage of
this is that while you are providing your card information to
paypal, this is the only company who you are giving this
information to and since they are large and therefore,
hopefully, trustworthy, your privacy and security should be safe.

Then when you make all your various purchases with smaller, more
anonymous traders, all you do is make the payment through paypal
and this avoids all the dangers having to give all your
sensitive data out again and again. It is another example of how
using credit cards online are becoming safer and more
convenient.