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We want you to be aware of the risks to help you keep a little safer ...
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 Introduction: Online Shopping Safety — by the BFC Staff Today, online shopping is ideal for many of us – people with disabilities, people with children, people with hectic schedules, and others who just may not have the time or the energy to spend all day walking around the mall. In today's world of commerce, the Internet fills a need for busy consumers similar to those mail-order catalogs that were so popular a century ago in rural America (and still popular these days for some with limited Internet skills or who may not have readily available Internet access). Most of us here at BFC have found that today's online shopping experience is much safer, more efficient, and immensely more convenient than a trip to the mall. And for careful shoppers, shopping online is usually more cost-effective. But whether you shop online, or at the mall, or even in a mail-order catalog, you do still have to be careful when you go shopping. However, unlike the risk involved in walking through a dark, desolate parking lot at night with an armload of packages after the mall has closed, it is doubtful that you will be physically attacked and robbed at knifepoint while shopping online. However, you can still get scammed and robbed by an unscrupulous online merchant. Consequently, it is vitally important that you learn how to tell the difference between an honest merchant and a scam artist, if you can. And sometimes that is not an easy task. In the next seven pages, we will cover the following important consumer topics: |
