The Blonde Diaries

There is nothing worse than finding the perfect bargain at the perfect place and then finding out months later that your security has been compromised. Can I tell you a waive of panic has passed through my house a few times when I have received notices from my credit card company that my security could have been compromised from shopping. Not a comforting thing to be hearing/reading.

So what can you do when you are shopping online and come across the perfect bargain and you just aren’t sure about the security on the website? Well here are some shop safety rules that might help:

• Check for signs the company is secure – do they have a privacy or security policy? What about a locked padlock in the navigation bar when you are in the check out process?
• How is their record with the Better Business Bureau? Are there a lot of complaints?
• Does anything negative or any red flags come up when you try googling the site’s name and the keyword reviews?

If all of the above items are ok and you still are not sure or maybe you just aren’t comfortable with online shopping in general it is ok. Shop Shield is a new company who is beta testing a pretty awesome feature. You can create a user name and password for their site and input your valid information – ie real name, address, credit cards, email address, etc. and then they will make you either one time use information or reusable information good for one year.

The security behind this is that you don’t have to worry about your payments or your information not being secure because Shop Shield does that for you. Shop Shield reviews your emails looking for scams and deletes them for you so that you don’t accidently give out your information to scammers. They also watch your credit cards and know that if someone is trying to use an expired number combination or a number combination at a store other than ones you have specified in your account that some one is acting fraudulently with your information and puts a stop to it before it is too late. So now you don’t have to worry when shopping on sites you are not familiar with as Shop Shield will protect your personal information while you use your specially generated information.

The service is 100% free including the scrambling of your account numbers and actual information and providing your “expiring information” and has a $10,000 dollar guarantee in the case that your information is compromised from their service. Sounds like quite a deal and something I will be signing up for and testing out this weekend.

Tags: budget, online shopping