How to Ensure Your Online Payments Are Safe

Online payments are popular in today's world. We can't imagine anymore that we pay everything with cash money. The Internet and the easy of online shopping changed our habit of payments with cash money totally. Online payments took place in our daily life.

Everyone knows that it is necessary to ensure your online payments to protect you against several problems. Hackers try always to get some information about your credit cards or passwords which people need for payments online.

It is very important that you take the necessary steps before you start with payments online.

1) SAFETY OF YOUR COMPUTER

- Install antivirus software and keep it up to date; your antivirus program will be updated daily because more than 250 viruses are detected daily. It is necessary that you scan regularly all your files.

- Install anti-spyware software; check at least once a week if there are no upgrades available and scan all your files.

- Install a firewall; this kind of software will block your connection immediately if some information which can be dangerous wants to slip in your system.

- Make sure that you have the most recent updates of your operating system

2) WEBSITE OF YOUR BANK

For payments online you will use normally the website of your bank and you can find there mostly the necessary tips to avoid Internet fraud. Every safe connection will have https:// at the beginning of the Internet address and a padlock symbol.

Don't trust emails which ask for your password, your pincode or some other personal information. A bank will never send an email to ask for such information and don't click on a link in these kinds of emails ; they try often to get some personal information to make payments online from your bank account. These emails can be considered as scam and also people who use paypal receive often such emails.

3) IS A PUBLIC COMPUTER SAFE?

Don't use a public computer for your payments online! You will never know if some spyware is running there and if you should use it, change your passwords immediately.It is recommended to change your passwords regularly. Identity theft is a great risk and we need to take all the necessary actions to avoid this.

4)PASSWORDS

Don't store passwords which you need for online payments on your computer. Hackers will always try to find them and to rob your bank account. Try to remember them and don't use passwords which can easily be found; make a combination of letters and numbers. It is best that you store your password in a place where nobody can find it like a safe or another place which is locked with a key in case you shouldn't remember your password anymore.

There are different systems of online payments:

PAYMENTS WITH A CREDIT CARD

When you want to pay with a credit card it is necessary to verify that the website address begins with https://. Give only your credit card number online in sites which you can trust. If you want to buy tickets for theater or buying some goods online it is sometimes necessary to use this kind of payment. I advice you only to use this kind of online payment if it is the only one which is available for your purchases.

PAYPAL

Payments by using an email service like paypal : this service is safe because nobody can do payments from your paypal account when they don't know your password. Protection is then also very important. It is very popular between different countries of the world (55 countries) and you can send money to everyone who has an email account and have a paypal account. You can also withdraw money from your paypal account to your bank account; even credit cards can be used.

INTERNET BANKING

Internet banking is the most popular method of online payments; every bank has a different Internet address(which starts with https://). When you want to make payments online from your bank account you need also the number of your contract and a digipass or something similar to make sure that the bank can identify you.

Shopping online can be a lot of fun because you can compare prices at home and easier to find the best price for your purchases. It is important that you know your retailer to be sure that the site where you want to do your purchases is not a scam site otherwise the risk will be high that you will never receive the goods where you paid for. If you deal with an unknown company there are some things to research before you do your purchases online.

Look that you can find the necessary contact information of the company like business name, address, telephone number, email address and compare this information with the one from the domain register. If you can't find them there you can always be sure that the company doesn't exist.
Check also the return policy for the case you are not satisfied with the delivered goods!

Pishing, viruses, Trojan horses, worms and spyware are the greatest dangers of online payments. If you are aware of these problems and you protect you against these problems you don't need to be afraid to make payments online. Everything is done to ensure your payments are safe.