Shoppers in the United Kingdom love to make purchases online. In fact the UK is the number one country in Europe to do online shopping. The most popular method is to use an UK credit card payment. Due to the popularity of shopping over the net, avoiding falling victim to identity theft or Internet fraud should always be a top priority.
Making UK Credit Card Payments Safely
Scammers constantly troll the Internet looking for ways to get money out of honest, hard working people who are often unaware that they have been ripped off until it is too late. In the UK Internet scams are far reaching and all too common. Approximately four million individuals in the UK have been taken advantage of by scammers. The police in the United Kingdom have been known to shut down as many as 1200 shopping sites in the run of one week that were nothing but elaborate scams to separate people from their money.
When you decide to make a UK credit card payment it is important to be aware that for all intents and purposes shopping over the Internet with a credit card is as safe as shopping in the real world.
- To ensure the safety of your credit card you need to check the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. If you wonder what SSL is then here is a brief explanation. It is a public key encryption that ensures the security of communications that take place over the Internet. If the SSL is working properly and is active then the “https” should always be at the beginning of the website address. If you look closely at the web browser bar you will see the yellow padlock symbol. This is another one of your guarantees that the site you are on is secure.
- If you choose to make a UK credit card payment then you need to do some safety checks beforehand.
- What type of safety checks must you think about?
- You need to check every website that you are thinking about doing business with to ensure that all of the details of the address is correct.
- It is also important that the telephone numbers at the websites are there.
- You need proper contact information in case you run into any type of problem in dealing with the website.
Only buy from sellers who have good reputations and who have their fair share of customer feedback to provide that is good. It is also smart to steer clear of sellers who are overseas. It cannot be emphasized enough, only shop at secure websites. Look for the padlock symbol and a certificate that has been issued by a third party.