How to stay safe shopping online

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For almost all of us, shopping online has become second nature and with the Christmas season coming up, we will be browsing e-retailers looking for presents to give to our loved ones.

Online Christmas 2009 is also now boosted by the fact that Royal Mail has decided to cancel the strikes it was planning, which could have potentially done a lot of damage to sales.

A recent survey by eDigital Research and IMRG, the membership community for the e-retail industry, found that consumer confidence in online shopping had grown.

Statistics said that 93 per cent of people were planning to shop online for Christmas gifts, and more than a quarter planned to do more online shopping than last year.

Furthermore, 71 per cent of people planned to do half or more of their shopping online this Christmas.

Doing more with less

IT PRO spoke to James Roper, chief executive of IMRG. He said that the economic downturn had actually been good for e-commerce in that retailers focused on price and efficiency and were doing ‘more for less’.

“No time is more important than Christmas for that,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of things to organise, buy and communicate – and the weather’s awful.”

“Christmas could have been invented for internet shopping,” he added. “It’s always where we see the biggest growth and trade of the year, as you would expect.”

Roper said that there was more faith in the security of online shopping, and that there were virtually no problematic ‘cowboy’ companies, which had been driven away from the marketplace.

But he admitted that there was still a problem with criminals targeting shoppers with tactics like phishing emails: “If you answer daft emails that go round asking you for trillions of dollars, you’re kind of asking for trouble,” he said.

Security company Webroot also recently said that there was an issue with cyber criminals using fake emails and Facebook spam in the hopes of parting shoppers from their personal information.

Also, figures last May from the Office of Fair Trading revealed that many people didn't shop online due to 'trust issues'.

With that in mind, IT PRO spoke with experts who offered their own tips to keep safe while surfing online.

Andrew McClelland, director of business development at IMRG

McClelland is responsible for an accreditation programme called ISIS (Internet Shopping is Safe), which now accounts for approximately two thirds of UK online shopping retailers.

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