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Online Shopping – Safety, Privacy, and Benefits!
Holidays or not, online discount shopping shopping is fast becoming the main shopping choice for many people. People prefer online stores for their shopping needs over the brick-and-mortar stores for a variety of reasons – discounted price, quick price comparisons, unavailability of desired items in the retail stores, 24 hours shopping convenience, etc. Whatever the reason is, before you jump into the online shopping bandwagon, you must consider a few things to avoid frustration and monetary loss.
Before you pull out your credit card to buy an item at an unbelievably reduced price, think about the reasons why the merchant is throwing out his profits. Maybe it is a total scam and they want your credit card number to rip you off. Stay with the big online shopping sites. Sites that are publicly traded or reputable private companies do not spam your email inbox with unsolicited advertisements. If you find a shopping site, advertised in a spam e-mail, that sells $100 software for $10, you can bet that it is a scammer’s site.
Ask your friends about their experiences with online shopping sites to select sites that are worthy of your hard earned money. Another approach is to use a search engine like Google to search for items you plan to purchase. When you use Google to search for an item, you will get advertised and non-advertised sites offering your items at different prices. Check out a few sites before you decide to make a purchase.
Many sites like bizrate.com or nexttag.com offers price comparisons, reviews, and shopping site ratings. Use these sites to read reviews and to do a price comparisons. Sites like techbargains.com publishes information on latest bargains, coupons, and discounts offered by various online shopping sites. Monitoring this type of sites provides opportunities to get great bargains. One comparison shopping site, buysafeshopping.com, provides information on qualified shopping sites that have gone through a screening process for merchant’s identity, online sales experience, and the ability to deliver purchased items.
If you have to shop with an unknown online merchant, check for their telephone number at their Web site. Contact someone at the merchant’s physical location and talk to them. Ask them about their privacy and refund policy. If you cannot find a phone number or the phone number goes to a voice mail, instead to a live person, go shopping somewhere else. There are dozens, if not hundreds, good online merchants for any items you want to buy.
At the online checkout counter, you have to use a credit card to pay. When you use your credit card, make sure that your credit card and personal information are sent using encryption to avoid someone intercepting your information for unauthorized use. To check for encryption, look for https in the URL. It is perfectly safe if the site has http in its URL for all pages except the order page – the page where you enter your credit card and other personal information like address, etc. Even if a site is encrypted, it can still be a scammer’s site. Look out for tale-tell signs like numbers at the beginning of the URL. Avoid public computers at cafes, airports, etc. for your purchases. The danger is that hackers can install key-loggers to log your key presses before they are encrypted.
Always use a credit card to pay for your online purchases. Most credit cards have online purchase protection. If something goes wrong, you can always call your credit card company and dispute the charge. You do not have to pay for your disputed charges till the dispute is resolved. Federal laws limit your liability to $50 in charges should someone uses your card fraudulently. Never use a debit card. Debit cards pull money from your bank account as soon as the transaction is made. If you are ripped off, it may take months before you get your money back, if you ever see it again.
Despite all the cautionary warnings, online shopping is safer than shopping offline. You do not have to take a shower, dress up, drive and mingle with other shoppers and touch anything in the store for online shopping. How safe can it be? If you are careful, you can guard yourself against identity and credit card thefts by following safety tips discussed above. When you are using a credit card in an offline venue, there is a person, such as the sales person, who processes the transaction and this person can also see your private information. In online transactions, the middle man is eliminated. If you do your research, watch for signs of fraud and only use credit cards for your purchases, online shopping provides online shopping more benefits over offline shopping.
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Posted in Shopping · March 3rd, 2010 · Comments (0)
This query is an very tough one to answer. Since I entered the globe of digital in 1999 I’ve got seen a particular decline in the quality of pictures shot by amateurs. And there’s a very clear reason, the disease of digital. However, is there an answer to the current downside?
There is, and the answer to the current is straightforward, learn digital photography. I’m amazed at simply how thoughtless amateur photographers became during the last many years. The matter is with the economics of photography. As soon as the initial value has been overcome, the hobby of photography becomes dirt cheap. No processing costs and reduced printing prices and the multiple shot feature on all digital cameras.
In order to beat this there are three basic problems that need to be addressed.
1. Disease of digital
This can be the major drawback affecting most amateur photographers. What’s it? The answer is thoughtlessness. The disengagement of the brain before pressing the shutter button. When photography price a heap of money in processing prices we tend to all were so much a lot of careful when shooting an image. One put a lot more thought into a picture before pressing the shutter butter. With the minimal costs concerned in digital photography there aren’t any monetary hindrances so you do not have to fret if you take too many images. In order to overcome this downside, take time to think about your composition before pressing the button. In alternative words use you brain.
2. The Shakespeare result
You marvel how I got this title. Well, there’s a line of thought that if you were to put a hundred monkeys during a area each with a typewriter for enough years, they could corporately manufacture a Shakespeare quality manuscript. Utter garbage! The same goes for digital photography. The idea is that if you shoot enough pictures of a scene or subject, a minimum of one amongst them can be a great image. Rubbish! If you don’t put enough thought into them and use the principles of composition there’s nearly zero risk of a beautiful image. Amount means nothing.
3. The drive by shooter
Quick on the draw and a quick shooter. If it moves shoot it. The idea of a drive by shooter is that you would like to get in quick, open fire on your supposed victims and find out fast and onto the next job. Hopefully at the top of the day when you review your images there should be some that are great images. This idea is coupled with the Shakespeare result and therefore the hope that quantity will eventually manufacture quality. Unless you’re a professional with years of expertise, particularly in sport, your chances of the quick draw and spraying the realm hoping for images of quality are minimal.
So what’s the solution to those problems and the answer to the survival of photography within the digital age? Straightforward, learn digital photography or rather the principles of excellent photography. Take time to consider what you’re shooting and in the long run time to learn digital photography. There’s no simple means, just as in the film era, to shoot quality images. All that digital has done is create it cheaper and easier to press the button and NOT easier to induce quality images. Bear in mind that digital is just the medium for recording your images and has no part to play in their quality. If you were a unhealthy photographer, all it can do is to create you additional efficient at taking bigger quantities of poor images. Don’t enable the medium of digital to form you a a lot of prolific dangerous photographer. Take time to be told digital photography and improve your existing skills to the purpose of perfection. The additional effort you place into your photography the a lot of you’ll get out of it. Happy shooting!
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Posted in Photography · March 2nd, 2010 · Comments (0)