Today, more and more people use Internet for shopping. They go on different websites to buy commodities or in another word, all kind of stuff which they want. “Online shopping has become a convenient alternative to the traditional brick-and –mortar-store. It has provided a method of easily finding what you’re looking for or the best price without ever leaving your home” (Ball, 2008, Para.1). In today’s life, we always lack time. We don’t have too much time to spend on shopping since we need to do a lot of important things. But online shopping makes up the gap. But, at the same time, we got some other problems. We need our bank account and cipher when we shopping online. Is this safe for us? What if someone else like hackers usurp our private information? Also, there is a lot of online fraud that exists. That makes a lot of people uncertain about the online shopping. Frank Abignale is quoted as saying “Technology has made what I did very simple. Crime is getting very easier, faster and harder to detect” (Nicholls, 2006, para. 5). That’s true; we often heard of people who have had their bank account stolen or cheated by the website in the news. But in my opinion, we can choose our shopping website and then use our credit card safely.
We should use the online market effectively. In this high tech time, we can’t avoid putting our personal information online. The only thing which we can do is consider the website we are going to.
Since someone doesn’t like shopping online, if it is because of the security problems, online cheating is the one which confuses us. Sometimes, we have seen some very cheap deal on the website which attract our eyes. When we feel excited, we should also think about whether it is possible or not? If it’s too far from the normal, we need to clarify the deal. Sometimes it may happen like this if you don’t pay attention to it, “the more than 184,000 consumers who paid money to the companies about which they were complaining paid a median amount of $214. Forty-eight percent of those complaints were regarding Internet auctions, while 17 percent were related to sales of merchandise”( Robertson, 2006, para. 2). So, choose the thing which you need carefully, don’t mislead by the price on the website, the best way is go on the official web site like WalMart, Best Buy, Ebay, etc. These formal website is more safety than when you search for the goods on some individual website which is odd or not public.
“Credit card companies lose about $1 billion a year to credit-card fraud, while merchants lose about $10 billion annually, according to CardWeb, a credit-card information site”(Mulrean, 2008, Para.5). But, the truth is online shopping is quite safe, we only need to follow precautious, the majority of identity theft occurred off-line with criminals intercepting mail or skimming data from carelessly discarded credit card receipts. (Ball, 2008) In this case, we find that hackers always find the chance to steal someone else’s information when people are careless on the Internet.
The last argument is about the convenience of the online shopping. Online shopping is really very comfortable, we don’t need to stand in line and wait for in line, all we need to do is click the mouse and wait at home, and some delivery guy will bring what we want in a few days or sometimes, it only requires a few hours for the conveyance.
Online shopping is really a very convenient way for us, we should learn how to safely use this method in order to use it comfortably!
References:
Ball, G. (2008, April 15) Education Redefined, Is using a credit-card for online
purchases safe? Retrieved December 3, 2008 from:
http://www.bsu.edu/security/article/0,1384,86674-5031-17009,00.html
Mulrean ,J. (2008, March 12) MSN Money protect yourself, retrieved
December 3, 2008 from:
http://moneycentra.msn.com/content/savinganddebet/finddealonline/P36487.asp
Nicholls, T. (2006, May 10) Evening Standard, chip and pin fraud set to rise.
Retrieved December 3, 2008 from:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/saving-and-banking/article.heml?in_article_id=408939&in_page_id=7
Robertson, C. (2006, Jan 03) Majon Ithernaional Stay safe while shopping
online retrieved December 3, 2008 from：
http://www.majon.com/articles/Shopping_-_General/shopping_online_126.html
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