Online shopping is as exciting as doing it on the real world. You could browse over some wonderful products, some are common and some are unique. If you have any questions you could email or call a customer support agent to let them explain to you what it is. Simple isn’t it? You do not need to go the mall and walk around for hours to find what you need. You can just do it inside your room while munching on your favorite snack.

Online Shopping, just like the others, has a share of its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are already mentioned above. On the other hand, it also hosts a few significant disadvantages. One of them is, since you are transacting (buying or selling) electronically there is a possibility that someone other than you is expecting your transaction as well. If this is the case, having the right technical expertise, the other unknown “unlegitimized” person most commonly as a “hacker” could do everything under the sun once he “sees” what you are doing. The hacker can get your personal information and either use it for his/her own gain or use it against you. When we talk about personal information this may include the following, your name, address, phone numbers, history, credit card numbers, bank accounts, usernames, passwords and your whole life.

How can we protect ourselves from these threats? Simple, we lock ourselves in to make sure no one is peeking. No, I am not kidding. We lock ourselves for protection right? Let me explain a little bit further, we have this technology that we call SSL or Secure Socket Layer. SSL’s primary purpose is to protect any business transaction from the eyes of the hacker. It operates on a series of steps, which if left unfulfilled, could block or terminate the ongoing transaction thus thwarting any evil attempts of the hacker.

Now, before making any purchase on the Internet make sure that the website you are using has a valid SSL Certificate. You could easily determine if a website has it or not. Just look at the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or simply the website address. Instead of looking at a normal http://www.shoponline.com you should see a https://www.shoponline.com. Very easy to spot isn’t it? This ensures you that you are transacting on a legitimate vendor and that website has a security guard inside it.

Pick pockets, burglars, shoplifters and now hackers are getting sophisticated every miserable day of their lives. It is just right that we protect ourselves from them. There are so many ways to do that, SSL is just one of them. Again, if you want to type in that precious card number of yours, think a million times and look for https on the URL of the site always.