November 30, 2001

Online shopping requires caution

Edi­tors note: This is one of sev­eral columns that I wrote for the Colum­bia Mis­sourian. They were orig­i­nally called Your Dig­i­tal World

You did it, didn’t you?

You prob­a­bly went shop­ping last week and braved the hordes at the mall for the tra­di­tional post-​Thanksgiving bonanza.

I used to take part in that bar­gain hunt­ing free-​for-​all, until I found the Internet.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, you’ve prob­a­bly heard about the ups and downs of e-commerce.

So with the threat of hack­ers, or more likely, your e-tailer going out of busi­ness, what’s an online shop­per to do? Secu­rity – Far too many Hol­ly­wood movies have por­trayed the stereo­typ­i­cal angst-​filled teen-​age hacker crash­ing super­tankers or steal­ing credit card infor­ma­tion. Though not as bad as some in the movie biz would have you believe, you should take pre­cau­tions when spend­ing online.

Before enter­ing any credit card infor­ma­tion on a Web site, make sure to look along the bottom of your Web browser. In both Inter­net Explorer and Netscape, there is a lock icon; if it’s closed and locked then you know that some secu­rity is in place.

The icon indi­cates that your infor­ma­tion is encrypted, if a hacker gets hold of it, all he’ll get is a piece of mean­ing­less code. You may hear about 128-bit encryp­tion – this refers to the strength of the code hiding your credit card number. You should make sure to upgrade your browser to the 128-bit encryp­tion ver­sion, visit Microsoft’s or Netscape’s site to down­load it. If you pick the right file, you should get a warn­ing about not export­ing the pro­gram out­side the Unites States; if not, keep looking.

Still, 128-bit Secure Socket Layer encryp­tion isn’t fool­proof. You should check with your credit card provider, many of them offer pro­grams you can down­load that gen­er­ate a one-​time number for the retailer to use. Even if it gets hacked, it’s use­less to the would-​be credit card thief.

Trust – Once you’re sure your credit infor­ma­tion isn’t being stolen, you need to actu­ally get the mer­chan­dise you order.

How can you trust your e-tailer?

The first best step is to do a search on Google for the name of busi­ness. After the first few hits you should start seeing news items about them. If they men­tion things like “profitable” and “successful,” way to go! If you’re seeing “Better Busi­ness Bureau complaints” and “disreputable” or “bankrupt,” you might want to reconsider.

If you’re sat­is­fied that the com­pany you want to order from isn’t going out of busi­ness or to jail, make sure to scour the site thor­oughly for con­tact infor­ma­tion and any devi­ous fine print. If you’re still not sure, try call­ing the place; they may even take phone orders.

No bargain’s worth it – Often when I’m look­ing for an upgrade to my com­puter, I find a lot of sites with really cheap prices on the part I want. But a quick look over their poorly designed site that’s lack­ing con­tact infor­ma­tion and a phys­i­cal address often turns me to a more trusted seller with a higher price. The extra money you spend is for piece of mind.

Baby steps – Finally, if you’re just not sure you’re ready to dive head first into e-commerce, try vis­it­ing the site of a store in your area.

Some of these “brick and mortar” com­pa­nies offer added ben­e­fits such as being able to return mer­chan­dise to the store, and a guar­an­teed human being to yell at if your order gets screwed up.

Filed under: Technology

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