Before you dive headfirst into an online purchase, make sure you are dealing with a legitimate business or person. The traditional local Better Business Bureau or other consumer agencies such as Consumers Union should have the complaint history of the company in question. Online newsgroups are another good resource to check - try alt.consumers.experiences for a newsgroup that shares product and company information. Other good sources of information are your friends and family. However, remember that simply because a company has no complaint history doesn t necessarily mean that it has your best interests at heart - you would be surprised at how adept fraudulent companies are at changing their names and addresses.
Online commerce is relatively safe and becoming safer by the day.
The risk to your personal information or other data is a somewhat different matter. As we briefly mentioned earlier, encrypting information before sending it over the Internet is a big step in a safer direction. However even encryption is not a fool proof method because the information you send jumps from one computer to another as it moves along toward its final destination. If each point along the way is not adequately secured, or if the information is not adequately protected once it reaches its destination, then the risk to that data is increased. Verisign Let s step through the encryption process a bit.