Insurance and legal

Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK utilise online shopping, and it’s easy to see why when there’s anything imagineable available to buy online. With a myriad of different sites availables (from Sainbury’s Online to eBay), you can pretty much guarantee you’ll be able to find whatever you’re after.

But with such a high volume of people using the internet to shop, the potential of fraud is worryingly high. A lot of people are still a little nervous about inputting their card details online and it’s easy to see why. Someone committing fraud using your card can have a massive impact on your future finances, as it can result in you having a bad credit rating. So what can we do to help keep ourselves safe and secure when using the internet to shop??

There are a few things you can do to help you stay safe online, so let’s take a quick look at the best of them. Firstly, you should always ensure you’re shopping only on websites you know are secure. To check a websites’ security, you should look for an unbroken key symbol or a padlock symbol in the corner of the browser; this is a sign that the website is secure and can be trusted. If you can’t see either of these, you might want to consider shopping somewhere else. You can also look at the URL of the website as you’re about to make a payment; secure websites will use https instead of http. If you see the https prefix, then you know the site you’re shopping with is secure to accept online payments.

You should always ensure that the software and plugins used by your computer and browser are up to date – if your browser or operating system has an available update, you should install it. Often these updates contain important security elements, and you won’t be totally secure without them. Similarly, you shoud make sure you have up to date antivirus and antispyware software installed on your computer to make sure you’re safe.

The last one should be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people still fall prey to this kind of fraud. Don’t ever reply to email requesting your bank details or personal information, and don’t ever put this information into an email. Even if the email looks legitimate, it can often be a fake and on the whole, banks will never ask you for your account information via email. If you do get sent these kind of emails, you should get in touch with your bank using the information supplied on their website. You should never try to get in touch using the information provided in the email in question. You might also often get emails claiming to offer to repair credit of give you adverse credit cards. Although there are a lot of companies offering these services legitimately, they’re unlikely to email you and if you do require those services you should seek them out yourself.