Shopping Online – Safety tips To Bear In Mind

Online shopping. Because it’s frowned upon to be in a store with no bra, sweatpants, and a glass of wine. *wink*

A good number of people no longer bother themselves with the traditional walk in stores. Shopping online is now the order of the day and hey, why won’t it be. It’s super convenient and girl, I can wear whatever I like while at it.

Before we get into it all, Here are some reasons why people prefer to shop online.

• The most obvious reason – Convenience
• No crowds
• Comparison Shopping – You can view and compare prices of the same and similar product on different sites.
• Variety / Wider selection – You cannot compare the ‘space’ online with that of the shelves in walk-in stores now can you?
• Reviews – You get to read reviews from other online shoppers concerning an item. This saves you the stress and heartache we sometimes experience when we purchase an item and it doesn’t turn out as expected.
• Privacy – Now if you are like me and not worried about the stares you might get walking from the store to the house with bags full of hello kitty merch, then sure go to a walk-in store but if you mind, shop online.
• Discounts – Online shopping comes with its perks. If you are a regular, you might get coupons from the stores you shop from. Online stores also entice their buyers with discount codes too.

There are so many other reasons but I’m sure you guys get the gist.

I have been a victim of online fraud when it comes to shopping. I was duped once on Instagram and talked about it in my post The Frauds On Instagram.

Did I carry out the necessary due diligence I should have on the seller? No. For some reason I was too trusting of these people even when some of the prices seemed too good to be true. I still think about it sometimes and boy, does it grind my gears.

Here are a few tips to help you stay safe whilst shopping online.

• Shop from sites you trust- When you shop online, it involves providing your personal data which includes your card number as well. You should be extra careful not to leave sensitive information on sites you don’t trust.

• Don’t save sensitive information online- When you are a regular on some certain sites, It’s quite tempting to want to save your information on that site to save yourself the stress of filling out forms all over again. This isn’t necessarily a good thing and I advice against it. Don’t save any sensitive information on sites or on your browser.

• Verify website security – Not every website offers secure shopping so you want to be very careful about filling any forms or typing in your card details, as there are some smooth criminals out there that can capture every detail you input.

If you’re going to shop online, limit yourself to secure sites. You can tell if a site is secure by the URL.

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Secure sites have an ‘s’ after the Http and a small padlock as shown in the the picture above.

• Use strong passwords – I know it’s easier for us to use one password for so many platforms but the truth is most times these passwords aren’t strong enough. Always use passwords that have a mixture of caps, numerics, alphabets etc. Do not use obvious passwords like your birthday or address, things people can easily guess.

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• Do not shop online using free WiFi – Who doesn’t love free WiFi eh? We all do but it’s super risky. Unless there’s a VPN, do not shop online using free WiFi. Share your hotspot from your phone to your laptop if need be.

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• Don’t shop publicly – If you plan to do any shopping online, do it at home. You know who accesses your computer at home but you have no control over who also might be using that network in a public place

You also don’t have any control over what kind of spyware or malware might be infecting that computer. Therefore, it’s much safer to solely shop at home.

I would not want to sound prescriptive but my take is that people shop according to their convenience. Some of you like to touch the flowery fabric, rub your hands over it and feel the texture, or even test the fragrance of the deodorant and body spray because y’all are touchy-feely, so I suggest you shop at physical stores. But for me, I like to sit in front of my laptop, wearing my oversized t-shirt while I surf 40 different stores without moving a muscle. So, yeah, you could say that I like the convenience of shopping online.

Until my next post

Stay You. Stay Beeeyuteeful

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