Tips for Safe Online Mobile Shopping

Thanks to the advancement of technology over the years, people no longer have to leave the comfort of their homes to shop and take advantage of the discounts different shops offer. All this can be done on the convenience of your mobile device. Research shows that over 50% of shoppers do their online shopping on mobile devices. While this is a very convenient way of acquiring products, redeeming coupons and making many other transactions, it can also be very unsafe. As such, caution must be taken while using any online shopping app. The following are some of the tips that you can put to practice and that you can take advantage of to ensure safe mobile online shopping.

First and foremost you should ensure that you do not make any transactions while you are connected to public WI-FI. This is because these public WI-FI are not encrypted and are therefore not safe. Anyone on the network can always eavesdrop on the information that you send. All they would need is a packet sniffer that will capture the packets of data that are being sent over the unsecure network. So you should actually never look at anything or send information that you would not want another person on the network to have.

You should be very cautious when you are picking out the mobile payment apps. There are a vast variety of mobile payment apps in the market and they are increasing by the day. However, before you decide to download any of the apps, you should counter check the ratings, read the reviews that it has as well as look online for any people who claim to be scammed by the application. If you are in doubt you can always use the applications that your mobile banking services provides you with. You can be sure that these ones are legitimate.

When getting an online shopping mobile app, you should be sure to only visit online app stores that are legitimate. And while we are on this, you should not be looking for shortcuts that are cheap. App stores that you can trust are such as the Play store, Apples App Store, and Amazons apps store. These site vet the applications thoroughly before the put them up for download. You therefore can be sure that you will not get any malicious application which ensures that you are safe.

Also, before you send or enter any information on a website, you should ensure that the website starts with "https://". The "s" signifies that the site has SSL encryption that is installed. The sites that do not have the "s" and are only "http://", are unsecured and hackers can easily acquire personal information entered such as credit card number, passwords, and usernames.

Last but definitely not the least, you should pay keen attention and caution to what you click on. You should be very selective before on clicking on particular links that request for your personal information. To protect you from malware, you should have mobile security products such as McAfee Mobile Security, Lookout Premium and many other. These will scan the links for malware attacks and phishing attempts.