Online shopping has become the habit of choice among many consumers, with millions of people buying products online every year. While retailers take efforts to ensure that they’re eCommerce stores are safe and protected, that isn’t the case for all of them. You’ll need to know how to stay safe when shopping online.

That’s often easier said than done, especially if you haven’t shopped online before. It’s far from impossible, however, and doesn’t need much effort. You’ll need to focus on a few particular areas, alongside taking a few particular steps.

Whether you’re looking for discount vouchers from NetVoucherCodes.co.uk or want to buy some new clothes, you’ll need to be protected. Failing to do so could mean becoming a victim of fraud or a similar activity. If you don’t know how to stay safe when shopping online, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind.

How To Stay Safe When Shopping Online: Top Tips

When you don’t know how to stay safe when shopping online, you mightn’t know where to start. Using a few particular tips is sure to help you with this, including:

• Make sure the website is secure, i.e. has a https:// or a padlock symbol next to the URL.

• Know the company’s returns policy and your rights.

• Use online services like PayPal to add another layer of security between hackers and your bank information.

• Be smart. If something seems too good to be true, then it likely is.

By keeping each of the above in mind, you’ll keep yourself safe when shopping online. You’ll need to go a few steps further to ensure you’re completely safe. Several of these come highly recommended. While that involves effort, it’ll avoid the risks of being hacked or having your information stolen.

How To Stay Safe When Shopping Online: Steps You Need To Take

Research

If you’re unfamiliar with a particular eCommerce store or brand, then it’s natural to be sceptical about them. You’ll need to ensure that it’s legitimate before you buy anything from them. Spending some time researching them is vital. By doing so, you can better determine whether or not they’re a scam.

There are more than a few ways you can do so, with the most obvious being looking up their reviews. The more reviews a brand has - especially positive ones - the more confident you should be in them. At the same time, pay attention to the negative reviews. See how the retailer responded to these and whether the situation was resolved.

You should also look into whether a particular storefront has been the victim of a hack at any point. If it has, see what security measures it’s implemented since then.

Focus On Security

Figuring out how to stay safe when shopping online typically means knowing how to stay safe when you’re browsing online. Even if you’re using well-known retailers, your information is still at risk. That’s predominantly seen in the connection between your computer or smartphone and the website.

Hackers can target this and steal your information. You’ll need to prevent that from happening. There are multiple ways you can do so, such as using a virtual private network to keep your connection encrypted and private. You should especially use this if you’re browsing the web online.

Avoiding entering sensitive information into sites when you’re using public wifi is also essential.

Beware Of Pharming Scams

You may have heard about phishing scams before, where scammers use fake emails to try to steal your information and commit fraud. Pharming scams act in a similar way, except they look and function precisely like the websites they’re ripping off. You’ll need to be aware of these to ensure you don’t fall for them.

Because they look and act like popular retailers - they’re designed to do so - it’s easy to believe they’re the real deal. Falling for it entails putting in your credit card information and other data, which the scammers steal to commit fraud with.

To prevent this, ensure you’ve typed the website URL correctly. If the URL looks different - such as including numbers or misspellings - then it may be a pharming scam. You should navigate away from it and ensure you don’t put any information into the site.

What To Do If Something Goes Wrong?

If you’ve fallen for an online shopping scam, it’s natural to feel anxious and worried. You mightn’t know what to do, however. You have multiple ways to help correct the situation, with the most obvious being to contact the platform you purchased the products through, in the case of Amazon and similar storefronts.

By disputing claims on these platforms, you can explain the situation and should get your money back. If you’ve fallen for a phishing scam or had your information stolen, it’s a little more complicated. The first thing to do is contact your bank and inform them of the situation. Cancelling and changing your credit card is also recommended.

If you’ve used PayPal or a similar payment processor, you should use the same method with them. The sooner you act on this, the better protected you are. By keeping your financial provider up to date, you can minimise - if not eliminate - the damage the hacker could do.

If you’ve had passwords and similar information removed, then you’ll need to change these as quickly as possible.

How To Stay Safe When Shopping Online: Wrapping Up

If you don’t know how to stay safe when shopping online, you risk being a victim of fraud, alongside multiple other crimes. Nobody wants that to happen. While all high-quality eCommerce retailers will go to great lengths to ensure this doesn’t happen, you can’t say the same for all of them.

Being smart about your online shopping habits is vital. Keeping each of the above in mind when you’re browsing eCommerce retailers is essential for this. Once you do, you shouldn’t need to worry about buying anything online. What’s stopping you from picking up the clothes you want to get?

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.