Safe online shopping is all about doing your homework and if you have never shopped online then start with some recommendations from your family and friends and try to find out more about the company you intend to make deal with and pass on your credit card information.

All this is important because if something goes wrong with your purchase, then the more information you have the better position you will hold of. Always look for the business street address, phone number and other information if it is a local website. If you are not sure about a company’s track record you need to do some research online whereby you can search for complaints and the company name into google forums.

When you are confident enough about a trustworthy website and you are ready to buy:

1. Check the description of the product, price including the cost of delivery, currency and taxes and other warranty details. Good shopping sites shall give you an opportunity to confirm or reject your order before you pay for it.

2. Check for the method of payment such as credit card, money order, cheque etc. In most of the cases it is always safe to pay through credit card such as Visa, Master card that all have chargeback schemes and won’t hold you liable for any undelivered goods or unauthorized transactions.

3. You should confirm that the website has a secure checkout because Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is the most frequent technology used to secure shopping websites. This is because it encrypts your personal information as it passes over the web.

4. Check the place where your details shall be stored later because some online businesses store them on a secure server or destroy them once the transaction is processed.