Ten Steps to Safe Online Shopping

Published Sun 23 Mar 2008 12:34 PM AEST, by James Murphy

Online shopping can be very safe and secure if you know who you're dealing with. Follow our ten step guide and you'll be shopping online safely in no time.

There's a question most online retailers get asked from time to time by new customers "why should I trust your online store?" in fact why should you trust any online store for that matter (of course online stores are targeted for fraud every day so that question is often reversed!).

Trust isn't really the best word to use actually as it also means faith which implies that there may not be any logical proof. Verify on the other hand is a much more suitable word, "how do I verify the identity of this business?" a scientific approach and hard facts are what's needed here.

So you've landed on a website and you're thinking about making a purchase online, what next? Well, we've put together a little checklist to help you...

First impressions are important, browse around a bit and get a feel for the site; check out all the important pages like About Us, Contact Us, Delivery and Payment (there should be no dead links/missing pages here).
Check if there is a listing for the business in the White Pages (Don't be put off if you can't find a listing though, some online stores don't have a telephone number).
Most companies will display their registered business name and number on the About Us page or in the page footer. In Australia you can verify this information online:
ABN: http://www.abr.business.gov.au
ACN: http://www.search.asic.gov.au/gns001.html
Send an email, chat live or call the business and ask a few questions and see how they respond.
Search for the business name or website address online. Unless they're a brand new business you should find multiple references and even comments in forums etc.
Use an online WHOIS service to query the domain name and check the registration information:
Australia: http://www.mywebname.com.au/
Top Level (.com, .net etc): http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/
Look for a Seal (no, that's not the fish-eating marine mammal kind of seal!) to verify the online stores SSL Certificate and confirm it's still valid. Comodo, Verisign and Thawte are some of the biggest providers of SSL Certificates; usually you can just point or click on the seal for verification.
Make sure the store has a Privacy Policy/Statement (there'll usually be a link to this at the bottom of the page).
Extra validation may be available if the business uses a company like ScanAlert (Hacker Safe, McAfee) or ControlScan to perform continuous security auditing; it ensures that the site is a secure place to shop and do business.
You can also look out for other business certifications, endorsements or awards - feedback and comments from previous customers is always a good place to look.

You probably feel a bit like Sherlock Holmes now but what you've just done through a methodical process is verify the facts and eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) the risk!

Just one last thing before you go, an SSL certificate provides the necessary encryption to protect the details of your transaction during the checkout process. Before you start typing in your credit card details, check that you can see a locked padlock icon at the bottom or top of your browser, and the website address begins with https and not http.

Now you can shop online with confidence ;)

Safe Online Shopping Recommendations:

At Online Shopping Australia we shop online just like you, and we do most of our shopping at discount department stores. Here's a list of stores that we shop at regularly, and can highly recommend for safe online shopping. We've sorted our top online discounters in order of the amount of stuff we buy from each store.

Information above was checked for accuracy before publishing on 23/03/08 at 12:34 PM AEST

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