HOW TO SHOP ONLINE

BUY AT WELL KNOWN PLACES
Shopping over the Internet can be as safe as shopping on the street or in a store as long as you know where to make your purchases. The electronic commerce is well developed and there are big companies working on the sector. Giving preference to these companies is one way to safely prevent that your personal data and financials get lost or stolen.

VERIFY THE SECURITY CONDITION OF THE SITE
The first step is to verify how secure the site is. When you access an online store, there must be evidence of some sort of secure method that requires usernames and passwords combined with email, text or phone confirmation with a secure code. Some countries have what is called a digital certificate and the access to information changes on monthly bases. An example of these constant changes is the use of letters and numbers where at one month letter A =1 and the next, letter A =4. In general safe addresses start with “https”, where the “s” symbolizes a safe transaction.

KEEP YOUR COMPUTER SAFE
As important as the safety of an online store is the safety of your computer. Keep distance from sites that you don’t know, avoid emails that you don’t recognize and keep an updated anti-virus program on your computer. Always visits the site of the suppliers of the programs that protect your computer and install all the updates of security as soon as they will be available.

PRIVACY POLICY
Another to verify if a site is secure is looking at its privacy policy. A clear and concise privacy policy describing in detail how your information will be handled is a good point of reference. Always verify if the website won’t keep your information on a database (at least the critical information).

SPAM
Never buy anything or even access a product or link that comes on a spam. The act of sending a spam message demonstrates how unethical that company is. If a company doesn’t care about sending a spam, just imagine what it can do with your information.

Does EVERY website NEED an interactive community?

In order to answer or to discuss the need for an interactive community, I would refer to one of our blogs “Can Your Brand Thrive WITHOUT Online Social Media?” which we have discussed the need of web advertising. There, we see that some companies might be better if they don’t get involved with this new media channel.

The example given –weather.com – is a good start point for our discussion. It goes back to the same principle of any business…how are they paying their bills? How do they profit?

We know that the web can be a good source of revenue if used wisely and in line with the company objectives and goals. As we saw, it doesn’t make too much sense for Boeing to have an interactive web page.

Another example would be a private school. Private schools should have a web site to help parents follow the school activities, children’s files, calendars and so on.
However, if the school tries to get feedback from the parents by starting an interactive community, it would be filled of complaints instead of constructive exchange of information.

For the weather.com, the first question should be if the company needs the revenue from the web to support itself while having the web page. They may need feedback from people that access the site to create a better environment but I don’t see a benefit on having an interactive community.

Next, a list of some websites where interactive communities are not present:
www.colegiocemp.com.br
www.amil.com.br
www.embraer.com

Interactive community:
www.theacornonline.com/comlink-00.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community
wiki.answers.com/.../What_are_the_benefits_of_using_internet_services_to_a_community