With no queues, no crowds and no closing time, its easy to see why so many of us choose to shop online, but while most of us know the high street procedure for faulty goods, refunds and other customer issues, knowing where you legally stand online can be confusing at best. If you have ever felt that twinge of anxiety as you hit the OK tab to complete your online transaction, then this guide is for you. Consumer watchdog Which? has come up with the following guide to help you navigate and negotiate your way round the legal parameters of the internet high street.
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Know your online rights
Are you addicted to eBay?
In under a decade, eBay has grown into an incredible auction website that commands an audience of around 37 million people around the world. Some look for bargain second-hand goods, others look for cheaper versions of something they’ve spotted in the shops, and others just find themselves addictively browsing five times a day, which has to be a bit healthier than smoking, though perhaps no cheaper.
As long as you know what you are looking for, you can usually find it posted on eBay. From skin care products to outfits for you pooch, car care products to shoes – both footwear and alloys – you can bid for what you want and for the price that you are willing to pay.
Apart from the opportunity for a real bargain, there are growing numbers of aficionados who think eBay is simply more fun than a shopping mall. While the process of bidding can see like a tiresome process at your first try, when you do win a bid at a good price, you might feel like you’ve won your item, which is exactly what eBay tells you when you’ve ‘won’ the item. Feeling victorious over a store purchase just doesn’t come that often, unless you happen to find the very last this season’s must have that just happens to be your size.
“eBay is entertainment,” says Dawn Reno, co-author of The Unofficial Guide to eBay and Online Auctions. “It’s different all the time, never the same. Every half-hour there’s all new stuff, which is so indicative of the internet as a whole.
“Plus, people love an auction. There’s something about bidding that gets the heart pounding.”
eBay has certainly become one of the most successful concepts of the internet age. Uniquely, it is like the world’s largest second-hand shop and all the bargain-basement shops in the world all rolled into one.
Jim Griffith, head trainer of eBay University – the company’s road show of seminars for novice buyers and sellers – says, “Even if you don’t use it, you know someone who does, and you’ve had to listen to their stories about how much they love it.”
Since its creation, eBay has become a daily fix for millions of buyers in search of quirky stuff. It’s addictive and many homeowners find themselves hunting around on eBay instead of sitting down in front of the television. People with laptops, of course, often do both at the same time.
“Five minutes of eBay will expose you to more items than you’ll ever see in a shopping centre,” says Marsha Collier, co-author of eBay for Dummies.
On any given day, there are millions items for sale on eBay, with millions of new items added daily. Sales per day run up into the many millions of pounds. For many homeowners, it has become a way to buy what they want and sell what they don’t want.
Big News: All Those Important Password Aren’t Incredibly Unhackable
It’s a clearly inevitable truth that we have loads of passwords. It likely started with a secret code number for our bank, but since that point, the growth of the internet has meant that every day brings a new network, and requires a new password.
Only this month I presume I’ve enrolled in around 12 new websites and networks. Have I chosen a different password for every one? No way. It’s improbable to do something like that, in part because there’s not a way I would ever remember them, but also since ‘like all of us’ I don’t have a method to monitor varied passwords.
I maybe could write them down in a book somewhere, but what if I set it aside or couldn’t get to it, or -and this is far more typical- wasn’t at my computer and had to get a specific account password? It’s like leaving all the house keys at your desk and never heading out anywhere with them: safe, yeah, but you’ll lose your mind from the lack of convenience.
So, I presume I’m just like most people: I have around three passwords that I can reasonably bring up in my mind, and when I try and go to a site and it doesn’t work, I reach through and think of the other passwords I have in my mind until one is accepted. But is this reasonable?
Well, think about this: do you actually trust every single service you sign up for? And even if you actually trust them, what’s to block a compromised security system from happening at their HQ? It’s taken place with big companies dozens of times – so it can truly happen to a small company. Relying on the same password across all your sites signifies that if a single one of your passwords is compromised, all of them might be.
Alright, I understand too much fear. Thankfully, there are excellent tools to deal with this exact problem. Instead of buying a notepad and creating a crazy password each time you register for a website, there are wonderful programs that function as a kind of password ‘safe’, where one main password gives you access to the entire system.
Any of these single password organizer pieces of software will make up random passwords for your logins too, giving you the chance to sleep easy with the knowledge that even if a pass is found on some lost site you registered for and quickly forgot, no one will ever be able to use that password for anything. Eliminate all that fretting concerning online safety commence with a password organizing tool immediately.
About The Author
Article written by Vanessa Holden. If you are looking for the right software that will help you save all your passwords in the one secure place why not check out www.selectsoftnow.com – they have a great range of utility software that can help you with a whole range of things.
The author invites you to visit:
http://www.selectsoftnow.com