Safe Surfing Online

Stay Safe When Buying Online

Online shopping has opened up new venues and given one freedom and convenience to shop from their house. From real store shopping to TV shopping to more popular, online window shopping, the times have changed. With changing times, people are finding new and smarter ways to steal or forge or break into a safety measure. This applies to online safety as well. Internet safety is also an important aspect that one should not ignore when they are spending more time online. Efforts of ICRA for safer net surfing should only increase awareness among online shoppers.

Whether one is searching for the type of insurance or accessories needed for pets, they should always make it a point to check if it is a safe site. Content labeling systems are a great help, when one needs to verify if a site is safer to browse. Online thefts are on the rise, making it important that one browses only safer and reputed sites, leave alone providing their crucial financial data securely.

So, the next time one finds an advertisement stating hot deals in furnishings or automatic litter box, they should refrain themselves from navigating to it immediately. Make it a habit to buy from trusted vendors, who give importance to financial security. It is not always about buying online that can pose dangers, browsing or downloading free content may also harm one’s personal computers, making them lose their important data that they have stored and cherish. Installing safety measures in a PC is as important as, installing security measures to their house.

Be on Guard, Be Safe: Online Activities

With modern technology’s quick accessibility to most online users all over the world, it is not new for us to hear crimes and other fraudulent activities done via internet. For sure, in one way or another, some of us or a family member has been a prey of these cyber crimes.

How can we prevent this from happening to us? Most of our activities nowadays do make use of web surfing like plain researching, looking for the best deals on online shopping or maybe you are planning your next holiday trip to escape the stressful life from work.

Let’s face it, almost all walks of life, whether you are a parent, an entrepreneur or a student looking for the best medical school for your intended career as an ultrasound technician in every aspect needs to transact business through the internet.

One of the most common forms of online activity that we cannot prevent is online banking or other forms of online payments. And it is for this reason that one must create a totally unique password for each of the varied online accounts that we hold. Here are some valuable tips for all online users for a safety online transaction:

1. Make sure you have different passwords for every online account you have like your email password should be entirely distinct from your other social networking and online banking accounts.

2. Use a combination of symbols, letters and numbers when creating a secured password.

3. Never give any important personal details like birth date when creating a password, since this can easily be guessed.

4. Secure the recovery options of your password setting in your computer and always update your account password for security measures.

5. Don’t give or store your password to anybody even to your family members. Your password is your personal account and nobody has the right to have access on it.

6. Be sure to come up with a personal question and an appropriate answer to it that only you can answer in the event the online system asks for security measures in cases you forgot your own password.

7. If you are always having difficulty in remembering your own password, write it down and make sure that piece of paper is kept in a secured place where nobody can easily get it.

Creating a distinct and secured password is an effective way to safeguard all your online activities. Be on guard always and be safe. Keep a wary eye for any cyber criminals. Remember, no matter how protected or cautious we our on our online activities, these people will always look for the perfect time for their next victim.

How to Shop for a Breville BJE510XL Juicer on the Internet Safely

A lot of users now prefer to do their shopping online instead of having to run to the store whenever they need to purchase something. While this option is undeniably more convenient for them, it can also put them at higher risk of becoming victims of online fraud. Even purchasing a product such as the cheap Breville BJE510XL juicer for sale which can lead to identity theft that can require hours and a lot of money to get the mess cleaned up. This article takes a look at some of the things that you can do to make online shopping safer.

The first thing that you will need to do is to do your shopping only at trusted sites. While smaller websites may offer better prices compared to larger companies, it’s still not advisable to purchase products from these online stores, since these also have minimal security compared to the larger sites, making these a con artist’s playground. Play safe and choose the established and trusted ecommerce sites (Read more).

Another thing you will want to do to is to make sure that the ecommerce site actually takes security into consideration. Some shoppers, in their haste to purchase products such as the Breville BJE510XL juicer, simply type in all of their personal details, including their address, telephone number, and credit card number without actually checking if the webpage is secure. As a result, they end up becoming victims of identity theft. Be careful when giving out confidential information on the Internet. Also, do make sure that the website uses a secure connection, especially when it comes to payment submission, in order to lessen the chances of being a victim of a scam.

Finally, do check out your credit card details once your bill arrives. If there is an item there that you didn’t purchase, report this discrepancy to your bank immediately.

Shopping for an Breville BJE510XL juicer online need not be a nightmarish experience. By taking these factors into consideration, you will be able to make your online shopping experience safer, allowing you to get more protection from online threats.

Buy Cat Litter Box Furniture Safely Online

I don’t know about you but on line shopping seems to me to be a bit of a lottery, most of the time it is perfectly safe but on the odd occasion you can get ripped off – especially if you don’t keep you wits about you.  Take for example the time my girlfriend tried to buy her father an iPod Nano for his birthday.  She looked around online and found it at a really cheap price on a website she had never heard of. She thought nothing of it and bought it using a VISA debit card, not a credit card, and the money left her bank directly.  She waited patiently for a few weeks for her Nano to turn up in the post but it never arrived. She decided to check her email and sent one back to their ‘customer service’ asking for some clarification on the situation.  This email bounced back as ‘non delivered’ so she tried to access the website that she bought it from directly and discovered that it had been removed without trace!  Needless to say, when she told me about it I was extremely annoyed – not just at the scammers but at her for using a debit card online without knowing the company she was buying from! As  far as I was concerned, that was the biggest mistake.

With that story in mind, I decided to buy my pet cat some cat furniture so I went online to look to see what was available and at what price it could be bought for.  There was lots of competing sites but the best one I found was http://catlitterboxfurniture.net/. One of the things that really appealed to me was that they fulfilled all their orders through Amazon.com so I had absolute belief that with such a partner as Amazon my money was safe and the item would be what I had ordered.  Their reputation really does mean a lot.  Needless to say, I placed my order and my item turned up two days later so my faith in online shopping and fraud has now been renewed!

Keeping your Most Precious Treasures Safe

My wife and I recently re-evaluated our budget.  Of course, the mortgage is our biggest recurring expense (thank you, amortization calculator).  But we’ve come to realize that our house isn’t our most precious possession – our children are!  So we’ve decided that we should invest in software that will keep them safe while on the internet.  Our kids are in fact good kids, but there are so many ways for children to find trouble on the internet (intentional or otherwise) that we simply owe it to them to ensure that they’re safeguarded online.  Honestly, no parents can monitor their children 100% of the time so an investment such as this was a good one.  We found this very informative government publication that gave us some ideas on how to keep them safe.  So I just want to recommend to every one reading this:  Remember what the most important treasures are in your life and make sure you’re keeping them safe.  No cost is too high!

Protect your Kids From Being Psychologically Affected By Inappropriate Content

The internet like all the good & influential things can be used for good & bad purposes. The information available on the internet today helps many live healthier lives, get better deals from health insurance quotes to grocery shopping, advance education, research & so many other wonderful things. Unfortunately, the same time it is full of inappropriate videos, images & other content that can be potentially hurtful to young minds & in some cases can cause some serious long term psychological damage. Psychological disorders may occur due to many different stressors, many of which are traced back to the childhood (Psychological Disorders). The inappropriate adult graphics or hate content on the internet can potentially be such a stressor. Psychologically traumatic content DOES exist, in fact it can be so bad at times that even adults can be ill affected by it mentally.

For this reason as a parent you might consider protecting your child from such content by using the appropriate software. You may go light on the settings, the more you block, the more your child is likely to look for a way to bypass it. Keep in mind that your child can be potentially more tech savvy than you. Ideally, you just want to block the real ill content and try to trust your child on the rest.

Solutions: 

On computer level:

Many operating systems, including recent versions of windows include options for parental control already, so this can be a great feature for you to look in. Filters can be applied on the user level & the browser level. You most likely want to apply them to user level, since there are plenty of browsers that are available to download for free. Spend a little bit of your time configuring the options & ensure you get it right.

On Router Level: The better Option

If you are using a router with multiple computers attached to it make sure to get something more advanced with better configuration options. A good router will let you set parental controls on a certain computer or other device attached to it and use a list of “bad” words to block inappropriate content. Having it set on router level will ensure that your little genius won’t be able bypass your security settings on the computer you set. Also make sure there are no other wireless connections available that can be used.

Tips To Make Shopping Online Safer This Christmas

When shopping online it’s always very important to take care you don’t become a victim of Internet fraud. This is especially so at Christmas time when more of us than ever will take out our credit cards to make a purchase.

When you are buying the latest gadgets for family and friends it’s imperative that you only give your credit card details to reputable sites. Unfortunately you won’t always know which web sites are legitimate as even the shadiest of establishments can design a top quality shop front to fool unsuspecting visitors.

Here are a few tips to help you have a successful holiday season where you get all the gifts you need without getting ripped off:

1. Use a different password for all the accounts you have at the different online stores, and also differentiate them from those used for your email account.
2. Keep your virus checker and firewall program up to date to ensure you have the best possible protection from hackers as you surf the web.
3. Use a browser which is more likely to be secure such as Chrome from Google, or Mozilla’s Firefox.
4. Watch out for offers which look too good to be true, they usually are!
5. A good idea it to find reviews of sites which deal with the product you are thinking about buying. This will mean you are less likely to give your credit card details to someone who will misuse them.

   A good example would be the likes of The E Cigarette Shop which gives a run down of all the best companies who sell electronic cigarettes on the web. There are millions of sites such as this run by reputable writers who take their time to test out the products, service, and reliability of all the suppliers in a specific market.

6. Another option is to do the entirety of your Christmas shopping from one of the Internet superstore which have an exceptional reputation which has been built up over the years. Amazon is the best example of this and it’s peerless customer service and low pricing means it’s a great place to pick up those gifts for the family without worrying about giving your credit card details to an unscrupulous store.

How to Avoid Getting Hacked

Protecting yourself online has never been more important. For many of us a lot of our personal lives are completely stored within email, calendars, Facebook, and a variety of websites. All of this information is vulnerable to online hackers. Worst of all it is not like you can contact a local Utah attorney if some hacker in Malaysia gets to you. Therefore you need to do everything you can to prevent hacking. In this article we will cover a few basic ideas you can start following right now.

1)      Set up double verification in your Gmail account – I can’t tell you how many times I see an obviously faked spam email come through my friends accounts. It is obvious they have been hacked and if they would have set up double verification in their Gmail this would not had been an issue.

2)      Play games and click offers cautiously on Facebook – It is amazing to see how often people share bad links on their Facebook account. Worst of all people actually click these links. Therefore here is the best rule of thumb; if something is too good to be true then it probably is. Don’t click it!

While these are some simple examples the same ideas can be applied to any other website. It is important you do your best to protect yourself so that your accounts don’t get hacked. After all who likes getting spammed by a random person in their email?

Only Buy From Secure Websites

When buying online you should look for sites with secure payment pages. You can recognise these by looking in the ‘address bar’ – the place where you type the address of the website you are visiting. Normally this will start with ‘http://’ but a secure page will change to ‘https://’ and will usually show a yellow padlock somewhere on the page.

Our shop sells gifts with your family crest and our payment pages are secure. However, it is surprising the number of people we get who telephone and tell us their debit/credit card details, saying they don’t trust the Internet and would rather talk to someone! When they place their order at the website we don’t get to see their card details, but obviously when they order by phone we do. Now I ask you, which is safer? Of course we aren’t going to use the card details to buy other things, but not everyone is honest.

Think twice about ordering by telephone: you be nervous about buying on the Internet but if you see that the payment page is secure, it is much safer than giving your card details to a stranger over the telephone.

How Trustworthy are the Websites You Visit?

Please be aware that not all online stores and review websites are as “genuine” as they seem. Anywhere there is a chance for money to be made, the “wrong crowd” will begin to appear. So it always makes sense to try and find the most reliable source(s) of information you can.

Therefore look for “trust signals” in the websites that you visit. What do we mean by this? Well, have you ever noticed the Facebook Like Button? This is a trust signals. If you see a number of people “like” a website, it means they have shared it on their Facebook profile. Therefore it is something they are happy to tell their friends about.

Other things to look for if you are looking to buy a new product are personal reviews about the products in question. If you take a look at this juicer reviews website for instance, you can tell that the woman who runs the site owns the products she is reviewing. Not all websites provide this level of personal service.

Websites are like people. Some are honest while others are not. Be careful out there.

Shopping Online – Read Reviews Then Buy From Trusted Sites

When it comes to only shopping, the safety of your personal information is of paramount concern. Entering personal financial information such as your name, address and credit card information into a form on an unknown site is something that should not be done carelessly.

Let’s take appliance shopping as an example. I have no problem getting information on products from independent websites, but I prefer to actually make purchases on sites that I am already familiar with.  To that end, I may look at an independent refrigerator review site for unbiased information on the product I want to buy, but the purchase will take place on a site like Amazon.

This may seem a little unfair to site owners – as you use their information and they get no compensation – but you can still reward them.  Most sites contain links to merchants selling the products they are discussing, so if you link through to Amazon from an independent website it is a win-win situation.  The site owner gets a small commission – at no additional cost to you – while you get the reassurance of shopping with a firm you know and trust.

Note that privacy concerns are not a new issue.  They have long existed, even at brick and mortar stores, where an unscrupulous employee can steal your credit card info right before your eyes.  Just as with shopping at a physical location, you can protect yourself online by being vigilant and taking basic precautionary measures.

As long as the page where you end up entering your credit card information is on a trusted site, you can rest assured that it is safe from misuse.

Worst case; remember that credit cards come with fraud protection.  So if someone misuses your card either online or in a store, contact the card issuer as soon as your realize is has happened to start the process of negating the charges.

Soccertools.com: Safe Soccer Browsing

The online world is a tough one, and you never know when you’re going to happen upon a site that just isn’t suitable for some reason, be it a number of provocative (or worse) pictures, horribly mean and/or vulgar comments by site users, or just a generally negative tone by the site owner.  This could even extend to site neglect such as outdated information, or worse still if the information is incorrect or misleading.

As soccer fans ourselves, we went searching for new soccer information sites that we would feel comfortable visiting on a regular basis and having our kids visit as well.  One we recently came across and want to share is SoccerTools.com.  If you read their ‘about’ page, you’ll find that the guys running the site are huge soccer fans themselves and they wanted to fill a void in the United States soccer website world.

There is a general lack of soccer information in one central repository and SoccerTools is aiming to fill that void by supplying tons of information such as final tables for each of the major European leagues, top scorers, World Cup historical stats, general soccer news and soccer equipment reviews.

It’s the last point we want to touch on that sets this site apart from the rest.  It is almost impossible to find a coherent explanation for why one type of soccer cleat is better than another or why this one soccer ball costs $150 while the next one costs only $40.  SoccerTools does a good job of explaining this, and they also have a great series of ‘Top Ten’ lists which are updated monthly and feature the Top Ten: Indoor Soccer Shoes, Goalkeeper Gloves, Match Soccer Balls, Women’s Soccer Cleats, and much more.

In our many times visiting this site, we did not ever notice an inappropriate story, picture, comment or forum post.  It seems the owners are very diligent about keeping that type of information off the site and they are so far quite successful.  We highly recommend SoccerTools.com.