How to keep your online transactions secure?

When a process of purchasing and selling occurs via the internet, we refer to it as online transactions. When a customer buys a product or service online, he or she uses an online transaction to pay for it. An online transaction is a payment system in which we send funds or money over the internet via electronic fund transfers.

But first, a quick overview of how an online transaction happens. This process is not as complicated as you may think. First, the merchant will submit the required transactions. Then the gateway of payment will send the merchant’s transaction to the processor. The processor can be a company or some financial institution. It handles the transaction between a customer and client banks. After approval of a transaction by the processor, it will send money to the merchant’s bank.

The Dangers of Online Transactions

The usage of your credit or debit card is one of the most dangerous aspects of completing an online transaction. Firstly, you hand over your credit card to a retail clerk or a consumer service agent. Then, they may use the information you provide for ulterior motives. If the firm has access to this information, they may charge you for an unpaid debt or even use an overdraft to obtain your bank account details. Your identity, location, and mobile number are just a few of private details kept on your card. Also, a malicious actor may use this data for identity theft or to make fraudulent purchases.

To further protect your information, make sure you utilize a secure encryption method when presenting your credit card. Signing up for one credit monitoring service is a wonderful method to safeguard your identity and avoid this. You should keep your personal information safe at all times. Although the internet is a fantastic tool for communication, you should exercise caution when disclosing your identity to others. And remember that you should never disclose the credentials to your bank accounts. Or the ATM pin codes for your debit and credit cards to anyone.

Let us go through some of the dangers that he should be aware of when doing online transactions.

Identity Theft

Identity theft is becoming quite common, especially in the pandemic. Someone can purchase products using your card and pay for them if they have your personal information as well as your card information. While you can do a chargeback on these transactions at the end of the day, the business itself does end up losing money because they have already sold the product to the person using your information.

This type of fraud is common in online purchases such as for purchasing a subscription for Netflix. Because these are often small amounts, it is entirely possible that you miss them when going through your credit card statement. Which are precisely why banks recommend that you go through your credit card statement every month.

Data Breaches

When the payment processors database gets hacked, we call it a data breach. The reason these databases are so valuable is because oftentimes a customer saves their credit card details with a payment processor and expects that they keep it safe and secure. Sadly, every now and then we end up finding out that a payment processor did not do their job properly and were not as thorough with their security as they should have been.

If the party that is holding your credit card information does not store that data properly and securely, and a data breach happens, you are sort of out of luck. Because very soon there will be hackers selling copies of that data to the highest bidder on the dark web. This is why we recommend that you do not save your credit card information on third party websites. Especially if you are only going to use them once or twice.

How to Encrypt Your Online Transactions?

The safety of online payments is becoming a major concern. Ecommerce could never have been so powerful without online transactions. Online purchases of goods, solutions, and services has made the lives of entrepreneurs all over the world easier. Keeping passwords, bank information, and other personally identifiable information secure is becoming increasingly important too.

Let us go through some of the simple things that you can do to make your online transactions safer.

Use Virtual Keyboards

Those hackers are not only looking at your screens; they are also looking at your keyboards. Malware may keep track of everything that we type. It is secure to perform online transactions using a virtual keyboard.

If your bank’s login screen has a virtual keyboard, you should be using it. The main reason is that hackers may have keyloggers on your computer that are recording your keystrokes. These hackers also have automated tools that go through all the keys that you have pressed and find out where your usernames and passwords are. Once they have those, they have everything they need.

Use Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication is something that every user should be using. That is, it makes your online experience that much more secure. Even if an attacker already has your password, if you have two add factor authentication activated on your accounts, they will also need access to your mobile phone or whatever device you are using for 2FA.

No matter what website you are using, we highly recommend that you enable two factor authentication as soon as possible.

Know the sites

Making payments on an unknown site is as risky as clicking on a link marked "not protected." Do not ever conduct business with a website unless you are familiar with it. Payment processors utilize extensive security mechanisms to protect your details from unauthorized parties, but if you willingly provide a website with all the authentication that it requests, no one can protect you.

This is why it is important that you only enter your payment details on trustworthy websites. The old saying that if a deal sounds too good to be true, odds are high that it is not true.

Do not use public Wi-Fi or a public computer to do online transactions

Every business out there gives free Wi-Fi access to its customers, but let us be honest, these Wi-Fi connections are not as safe as you may think. Anyone with a malicious intent can intercept your traffic and find out what websites you are using. And with some extra layers of technical knowledge and effort, they can even bypass the standard encryptions that the Internet uses.

There are ways to be safe on public Wi-Fi as well!

Using Turbo VPN to keep your online transactions secure

Virtual Private Network, or a VPN for short, protect your online activity unlike anything else. By connecting to a VPN service, you make your online activity completely anonymous and secure. Turbo VPN uses the latest encryption technology to encrypt everything that enters or leaves your computer. Turbo VPN accomplishes this by setting up a secure connection between your computer and their server.

How does Turbo VPN protect me?

Since no one in the middle has access to the encryption key, there is absolutely no way that any third party could intercept your Internet activity to find out what you are doing. Turbo VPN protects your online activity even if you are using a public Wi-Fi network. It does so by completely bypassing the DNS servers set up by the owner of that network.

DNS servers translate domain names to IP addresses, and it is how your computer knows where to go in order to view a website. Turbo VPN comes with their own Private DNS servers which take place of the DNS servers set up by the owners if public Wi-Fi network.

Where can I use Turbo VPN?

Turbo VPN has applications for desktop computers, laptops as well as other handheld devices. So, it does not matter if you have an iPhone or an Android device either, you will be able to use Turbo VPN regardless.

Keep in mind that you can use Turbo VPN simultaneously on up to five devices. Meaning that you can share your Turbo VPN subscription with other people in your family in order to ensure that everyone online drawings actions are as secure as possible.

Can I use Turbo VPN to circumvent geo-blocking?

Services like Turbo VPN ensure that they encrypt all of your traffic and that it passes through their servers instead of the standard pathways that it would otherwise take. This has the added benefit of completely circumvented standard geo-blocking techniques.

So, the answer is yes, you can use Turbo VPN to circumvent your blocking. You can even use Turbo VPN to access Netflix libraries of other countries. And since Disney+ is not yet available in the entire world, you can use Turbo VPN and connect to their US servers to use it.

And if you are planning to travel to another country and are worried that they may block websites, there is absolutely no need to worry because Turbo VPN can easily unblock those websites too.