Is it Safe to Purchase Event Tickets Online?

Identity theft is big news. Every once in a while someone gets burned while making an online purchase and that makes the headlines too. So is it really safe to purchase your sports or other event tickets online? Absolutely! However it is a good idea to take a few precautions first. Before we discuss those, let's take a closer look at the "horror story syndrome"...

Let's face it - news sells and sensational news flies off the shelves... so to speak. The more drama a newscaster can infuse into the day's events the higher the ratings. The fact is people get robbed every day. Accidents occur almost by the minute. Murders, abductions, and other horrendous crimes aren't all that rare either. So news folks also look for stories that are different. Let's face it, if all they did was list every crime committed within a 50 mile radius, most people would get bored during the first 3 minutes. It's not the news people clammor for... it's the story.

What they don't tell you is for every crime committed, there are thousands of people who quietly live their lives every day. Their dramatic moments are limited to spilled coffee on a new shirt or getting chewed out by the boss. That's why we watch the news. Because all the exciting stuff happens to everyone else.

So does danger really lurk on the Internet? Sure it does. Danger can also be found on most any street corner, at your local convenience store or in your own neighborhood. Just like a woman (or a man these days!) needs to take precautions walking to her car after an evening class, we need to be careful about purchasing online. So what makes for safe online practices?

First of all, use a secure browser. Firefox or Opera are considered the most secure. It seems like they have less problems with viruses and worse, browser hijackers, than Internet Explorer. What's a brower hijacker?

If you've ever try to search for something and start getting popup windows - often, but not always for pornographic sites - you're browser has likely been hijacked. Usually the ONLY safe way to get rid of one is to completely wipe out your hard drive and start fresh. There are some programs that claim to clean out browser hijackers, but this author trusts none of them. If you search and have no such popup problems and you don't consistently get junk sites, then you are likely safe from browser hijackers. But even so, you should be carefull about typing in important information online due to keyloggers. More on that in a moment.

While the risk is small, it doesn' hurt to use a password manager like roboform to fill in forms for you. It's reasonably secure and easy to use.

You should also stay behind a good firewall. Ghost is a good free firewall but for added protection you should consider Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro  Outpost not only protects your computer against hackers but also provides protection from keyloggers. A keylogger is a type of trojan program hackers can slip into your computer to keep track of the keystrokes you make. It's simple enough to discover your passwords, credit card number, bank information and just about anything else with this.

One other good protective measure is a program called Process Guard. This nifty little program stops anything from running on your computer unless you give it permission. You can tell it to allow certain things like Word or your browser to run all the time, but even those programs may get stopped if they do anything "funny".

Again, these are preventative measures. If you have not experienced any strange activity on your computer, everything should be fine. Now what about buying online?

Well, first, you should consider using your credit card. What!? Yes. By all means use your credit card. Most credit cards limit your exposure to fraudulent purposes to $50. Some protect you from losing anything. Remember all those folks who live boring lives and never even see a crime? Well there are millions of transactions taking place everyday online. This author has made thousands of dollars in transactions online. Only once did I have a problem - that was with a shipment from a company going under. The transaction was backcharged and I didn't lose a nickel.

It helps to pay attention to what you are doing though. For one thing you only want to buy something if you see that little padlock on the bottom right of your screen when paying for a purchase. This tells you the transaction is encrypted against anyone trying to steal your information.

Plus you never want to buy something from an email link, unless you are certain of the source. If you are sent a link from a friend, take an extra minute to verify it really came from there. You can usually trust links sent by newsletter publishers you've subscribed to also. I've never heard of anyone getting a bogus link from a reputable marketer. Please DO refrain from clicking on links from spammers though, no matter how luscious the offer looks. If you want the product type the name into a search engine and find it that way.

You should look for merchants participating in online "safety programs" too. Hacker Safe, BBB, and others watch this stuff like a hawk. New ones do pop up from time to time but if a site is put together professionally or the merchant is reviewed by a trusted source (like us!) than you should be fine.

In conclusion, buying tickets, knick-knacks, even homes and cars online is becoming more commonplace everyday. There's no need to fear if your computer is reasonably ecure and you use a major credit card.