You don’t even have to be that old to see how much shopping has changed in modern times. I’m only 27 and even I remember a time when buying things online was far from trivial and even considered strange. Nowadays, almost everyone buys or has bought something online. It’s easy, sometimes more convenient than going to a store, and a wider selection of products are available. Even I just purchased two containers of Everglades Seasoning. I heard about it online, wanted to try it, and realized no physical store north of Tennessee was going to carry it. Internet shopping to the rescue!
So shopping online is pretty great, but it’s not without its perils. I’ve personally had my credit card number compromised several times over the last 2 years. My suspicion is that the compromises occurred during a handful of international purchases I made. Buying things from companies located in other countries can be much riskier even if all precautions are followed simply because laws and standards are harder to enforce across international boundaries. Fortunately, fraud detection from most major credit cards is excellent, so I never lost any money, but it’s a huge inconvenience. So if you’re shopping online this holiday season, I’m here to offer some tips on how to keep yourself and your credit card information safe and secure.
The most important thing to do is make sure that any site to which you’re submitting your credit card information has valid and active SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. A good hint that things are working is the URL of the page will start with “https” rather than just “http”. Never submit credit card information on a site that is not using SSL. All modern browsers make it easy to verify valid certificates. I went to https://checkout.smalldog.com/cart and in the address bar at the top of Safari, there was a little lock icon next to the URL. I clicked on it and a window popped up saying that “Safari is using an encrypted connection to checkout.smalldog.com”. That’s what you want to see. I can further inspect the certificate by clicking “show certificate”. This will show all the details about the certificate, including whether or not it’s valid, and which Certificate Signing Authority (CSA) has issued the certificate. In the case of smalldog.com, I can see the certificate was issued by GeoTrust Global Certificate Authority. Safari has confirmed the certificate is valid, so I’m all set to enter my credit card information on this site. It will be encrypted and transmitted securely to Small Dog and no bad people will be able to steal it.
I don’t always buy things from major retailers online. Sometimes I find tiny companies or just choose to buy something directly from a publisher for example. These companies often don’t put as much effort or focus on e-commerce security, because it’s not their main source of business. However, you can still often purchase safely from such companies if they support PayPal. In order to even support PayPal, a company has to adhere to PayPal’s rules and systems which are secure, because that’s what PayPal does. PayPal acts as a buffer between an online merchant and your financial information (bank account, credit card, etc). When you use PayPal to purchase something, the merchant only receives an authorization code from PayPal. They never see any of your financial information. The merchant can then transfer the money to their own PayPal account from your PayPal account. The great thing about this setup is that the online merchant never sees or uses your credit card information. That’s taken care of by PayPal internally. From PayPal, you can manage your financial information any way you’d like. I personally only added a credit card to my account. So when I purchase something using PayPal, my credit card is ultimately charged, but it’s PayPal that’s actually doing the charging on the merchant’s behalf. In a nutshell: You pay PayPal, PayPal pays merchant. This is very secure and allows me to purchase things online with an extra layer of security. Small Dog’s shopping cart also supports using PayPal for purchases.
Those are my tips and suggestions on staying safe this holiday season when you’re shopping online. It’s easy to shop safely online if you follow a few basic rules of thumb.