Online Transactions - how to do safe shopping

The scope of internet is increasing day-by-day . Every day we can see a new thing happening in this world of internet . Thanks to internet that we can know each and every second of every news happening all over the world . But in my this post i m not going to discuss internet in deep , but i m here to discuss about online transactions that i somehow is now the part of our everyday life .

Whenever it comes to online transactions or online shopping , then various questions start circulating in almost every common man ,some of the questions are

Is online shopping safe ?

Can i possibly reveal my personal details by using this facility ?

First of All we need to know whats the importance of this facility in our everyday life . The points given below will clearly explain why we need to opt this facility .

Benefits of online Shopping

1. Less time consuming - Consider a situation when you planned to some other city , but when you think of visiting the reservation counter, for the tickets , then suddenly one thing comes in your mind "oh , there will be so much rush , my lot of time will get wasted , i wish somehow i could get the tickets at my home " .   Here is the solution then , for now almost every country have the facility to get online reservations , because it saves time and money a lot . Your time and the reservation staff . Dont forget to about your effort . 
2. On the spot results - If you have to go for a movie then you generally have to go to the ticket counter at the theater and then you have to ask if any seats are available . If not , it will definitely disappoint you, not only because you didn't find get any seats available bu also because you made so much effort in coming to the theater . Well in this case you can easily watch the status of the seats available through your PC at you home . Just a few clicks and everything is right in front of you and you can even book them in advance and last but not the least you can even select the location of your seats in the movie hall . 
3. Easy Banking - If you don't use online banking then you probably not be knowing the benefits we get from this facility . firstly we can perform transactions without even filling any paper slip or by standing hours in a line . Just in front of our computer screen . We can transfer cash or receive amount in our account , we can check our account balance at any possible time of the day . 
4. Easy bills & Payments - With the facility of online transactions you are now able to pay you electricity bills, phone bills , insurance premiums and other such things right from your home.

This with many more such conveniences are possible for us only due to this facility .


Now we will discuss

how much safe is the online shopping is ?
 The answer to this is that it depends on us . The more carefully we do the things the more safe we are . People generally think that its a risk . Of course everyone will think twice when it comes to money . But talking of myself , i usually don't like going for shopping , whenever possible i use my debit card for online shopping ,whether its for my phone bills , internet bills or for books . Let me tell you i have never faced any difficulty and danger in this process everything has been fair with me . Bank doesn't cheats . Some times due to technical problems money may get deducted but it is returned within 2-3 days direct to our account , we don't need to lodge any complaint about it .

Are we revealing our personal details over the network by using this process ?   
 No , we are not actually in this process there is no role of human the details we enter while online transactions go through secure servers directly to our bank . So we are not revealing any personal details to anybody , if we are doing it carefully .

Some important things to consider while going for an online shopping process :

• The very first thing that you make sure is , if the website asking for your personal details is having web address starting from "https:// "(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) . If its not , then it will be a risk to provide any information to these sites .
• Secure sites generally carry a padlock symbol before their web address , look for that and click to check the security certificate for that website . Like if you will open "www.gmail.com" then  you will see a padlock symbol , because you have to submit your log-in details there
• Do not provide your credentials to any unknown websites .
• Do not reply to any mails asking for any personal details . There are millions of people on the web who send phishing mails to obtain critical data . 
• Try not to do any transactions while you are on an unfamiliar system . There are some software called "Keyloggers" , they can record the key combinations typed by you .They generally run as hidden process . So be careful while shopping through cyber cafes or other such places . You can use virtual keyboard to avoid these keyloggers . But there are many advanced keyloggers present now to which virtual keyboards are useless . 
• After every transaction don't forget to note the transaction summary for further need if in case it arises .

With these things in your mind you are less likely to get any kind of risk from online shopping and transactions.
This is a very useful and time saving facility available to us , what are we need is to take some precautions as i have mentioned above . So be safe , be careful .