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Shopping Online – Protect Yourself

A slight change of tack - I though that the following article makes a good point:

Shopping Online -– Protect Yourself

These days, there are great bargains to be found by shopping
online. Many items that previously were only available in
stores are now being bought and sold online every day. Books,
cds, DVDs and electronics are all growing in popularity as
online purchases. Then there are things like flights, hotel
bookings, car rentals and the like that are which are well
established in the online shopping world. More and more stores
are putting up websites that allow you to make online orders
and even supermarkets now let you do your grocery shopping
online and they'’ll deliver the goods to your door.

Added to this growth in stores and other big business websites,
there are also millions of small traders offering you goods
online too. Online auction sites such as eBay are experiencing
phenomenal success. These types of purchases however carry the
risk that you do not really know who you are dealing with but
you have to give them sensitive financial information in order
to pay for your purchases. You are forced to choose between
buying from small sellers and then trust them with your card
details, or forgo the opportunities they offer and deal only
with large and trusted names.

Payment Sites

This problem has been recognized and that is why it is now
possible to shop online from lots of small sellers while
maintaining your privacy and keeping your financial information
secure. There are payment sites with the most popular probably
being PayPal, that are set up specifically to deal with issues
like these. Indeed, PayPal is now owned by eBay, which shows
the link in importance between the two services offered by
these companies.

What websites like PayPal allow you to do is open an online
account for free. You can then transfer money into your account
using a standard credit card payment procedure. The advantage of this is that while you are providing your card information to PayPal, this is the only company who you are giving this information to and since they are large and therefore, hopefully, trustworthy, your privacy and security should be safe.

Then when you make all your various purchases with smaller,
more anonymous traders, all you do is make the payment through
paypal and this avoids all the dangers having to give all your
sensitive data out again and again. It is another example of
how using credit cards online are becoming safer and more
convenient.



About The Author: Joseph Kenny is the webmaster of the UK
credit card comparison site http://www.creditcards121.com/,
where you can find a selection of credit card advice. For US
visitors there is also the comparison site
http://www.credit-cards-info.com/


Of course we offer BitPass as well as PayPal payment arrangements which offers similar benefits although you can fund your BitPass account from PayPal and further limit the exposure of your details to smaller traders like us. At our online contemporary music store you can also use PayPal's creditcard processing facilities to make payments to us.

We have considered going for one of the "trust" marks but considered that the cost to us compared to the benefit to purchasers of a few tracks was not worth it - be interested to see any comments on that judgment.

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