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The advent of faster broadband connections has allowed millions of people worldwide to perform everyday tasks from the comfort of their own home.

These tasks include;

• Online shopping, from groceries to gifts. In fact, almost anything you need
• Bank online. No more posting cheques or waiting in line at a bank
• Paying bills automatically. Utility bills via eBill accounts
• Play games
• Watch TV
• Listen to music
• and much, much more beside

This is fantastic. But there is a downside. Internet Fraud. This article will show some of the ways in which this can affect you and indeed, the steps you can take to reduce the risk of internet fraud impacting on your life.

Internet Fraud.

What is it?

Internet fraud is a practice where unscrupulous individuals try and obtain money by deception via the internet using a myriad of methods. From scam emails to hack attempts. Bogus web stores and even fake bank websites that look EXACTLY like the real thing.

In this article, we are going to concentrate on you, the consumer. In subsequent articles we shall be looking into how internet fraud impacts on legitimate businesses and how to best combat it.

One of the best ways to protect your money from these internet fraudsters is to avoid them altogether. In an ideal scenario it would never happen to you, but even the best of us are prone to get taken in once in a while.

The most common type of internet fraud is the one in which the fraudster offers something for sale online, they then proceed to take your money, and then never deliver anything.

if you have been caught by this, you must be wondering what can you do to get your money back?

You could always go to small claims court. This may be the first thing you think of, but this is both time consuming and expensive, so most people rarely choose this option.

Protect Yourself From Internet Fraud

There are some simple steps to protect yourself from this.

The first one, and most obvious, is to never use your debit card, pay by cheque, or by BACs to make an online purchase from someone you know nothing at all about. If you are a victim of internet fraud, you will not be able to get your money back. Even if you can go to court, there is no guarantee that you will win. Your money is probably gone.

One of the safest methods is to use your credit card when shopping online. You can also protect yourself by using a third-party payment gateway, like PayPal, to hide your credit card number. This protects you by allowing you to use the credit card company’s money, not yours, to make the purchase.

If the product does not come or is not up to your standards, you can get the credit card company to fight with you to get your money back. Most credit card companies offer fraud protection, so you may not have to pay at all for the scam.

If you do get scammed, the first action you must take is to call your credit card company and explain that the product never arrived.

They will put a hold on your payment and send you a legal document to sign. This will place the burden of proof on the seller that the item was mailed as promised. Your credit card company will recover the money from them if they cannot provide the necessary proof, and you will not be held responsible for the payment.

Take care when you follow this process because these scammers will take advantage of any minor mistake you make. They will likely try to put the blame on you so that they can keep your money. They may even accuse you of dishonesty in the process. Make sure you do not give them fuel for their fire.

First, do not react too quickly. Make sure the product is not going to come. Sometimes it may be delayed in shipping, so give the seller time to prove that they did, indeed, provide the product or service. 10 – 14 is a good time frame* for them to begin delivering what you purchased.

By waiting two weeks, you keep the seller from having the chance to claim they had not yet been able to send out the item. REMEBER: Paypal will react swiftly once you file a claim. Join Paypal today for FREE.

Do not wait too long to file a report. If you have already paid the bill, the credit card company is not going to be as willing to help. Also, if you dispute a transaction out of thin air months after you paid it, the credit card company may question your motives. The seller will blame you for not making the claim earlier, and you will probably lose the battle.

When you communicate with the seller or your credit card company, keep a record of all of everything that is said or sent (use recorded delivery for postal communication). The credit card company will expect you to take some steps to resolve the issue before you contact them.

You need proof that you have done the best you can to resolve the issue on your own. You will find that most online scammers will not respond to any of your contacts, whether by phone, email, or written mail.

However, when the credit card company asks whether or not you contacted the scammer, they will lie and say that you did not. So, you must have records of the correspondence available. Communicating via email is also an easy way to keep track of the messages you sent, and you will have the necessary proofs at your disposal.

Finally, do nothing to tip off the seller to the fact that you are going to take action against them. Do not tell them that you are going to contact your credit card company. Do not issue any threats or open-ended statements like “You will give me my money back, or else.” Just be as courteous as you can, try to work the situation out, and then turn to the credit card company if you need to.

Giving them a clue as to what you are about to do will give them the chance to begin preparing their defense against you, so keep it silent. When the credit card company comes calling, it will serve as a great surprised to those crooks who were about to run with your money!

Since over 20 million UK online shoppers use PayPal, it’s easy to see how you could be cutting out a big slice of your sales by not accepting it as a form of payment.

In fact, according to a recent Payments Council report, 19% of all UK internet payments are now made using PayPal!*

Cash in for Christmas

Sage Pay and PayPal have teamed up to exclusively offer £50 to the first 1,000 merchants that add PayPal and receive their first PayPal transaction before the end of November 2009.

Plus, by using PayPal through Sage Pay, not only do you open your store to more shoppers, you also get the added benefit of being able to view your transactions from one place.

My Sage Pay will be your one-stop-shop for all reporting and reconciliation.

Easy integration so you benefit from a seamless checkout process, with the PayPal payment option alongside the other credit and debit cards on your secure payment page.

Perform PayPal refunds through My Sage Pay.

*Terms apply.

There are many different methods available but by far the most preferred method for most online consumers is to use their credit card. This has proved to be the favoured choice as many consumers are totally at ease with using their credit cards online. By understanding this, it is vital that online companies have a method by which to process credit card payments.

To be able to accept payments this way, your business needs to set up an internet merchant account with a credit card processor. This is vital if your business is to accept credit card payments online.

Internet merchant accounts are put into place by business owners to allow receipt of credit card payments from the issuing company of your customers credit card that they chose to use on your website. Once these payments have been processed, the funds will be transferred from the credit card companies account into your nominated bank account.

It has been known for payments of this type to be transferred within half a day of the sale. SagePay are one such supplier of this service. Read more about them now.

Internet merchant accounts provide the credit card processor of a business with an automatic way of handling credit card payments that are made online.

Before you can go about setting up an internet merchant account, you first need to understand the different terms involved in using one.

One of these includes knowing what a payment gateway is. This is an online credit card processor that provides a path between a customer’s credit card account and the Internet merchant account of the online business.

Their primary role is to verify the customer’s account information and the online business’s request to have the funds transferred to their bank account.

Another important term is funds capture, which is the process where a transaction deposit is made on a business’s Internet merchant account. On the other hand, the term settlement means that the funds from a customer’s credit card account has been transferred to the business’ Internet merchant account.

For online companies, it is essential that their websites are able to process credit card payments, which makes it very important for them to set up an Internet merchant account.

However, before setting up such an account, business owners first need to understand the different terms involved in the process of accepting credit card payments online. This is because doing so allows them to fully appreciate how the whole process works.

Shares in London tumbled as the market opened this morning, following steep losses in Asia, as investor panic over banks’ exposure to Dubai’s growing financial problems gathered pace.

The FTSE 100 index of leading UK shares fell by 83.46 points to 5,110.67 in early trading, adding to yesterday’s loss of 170.68 points. The FTSE bounced back, to fall by 12 points to 5,182.13 after more than an hour of trading but all eyes will be on American shares when Wall Street opens later today after being shut for Thanksgiving yesterday.

Masayoshi Okamoto, head of dealing at Jujiya Securities in Tokyo, said: “I think we won’t know the full impact of Dubai until Monday after we see what happens in New York, where bank shares are likely to be hit pretty hard.”

In Frankfurt, the Dax index fell 1.32 per cent to 5,540.34 while in France, the CAC lost 1 per cent to 3,639.66.

Banks, which yesterday saw £14 billion wiped off their market value, again featured heavily among today’s losers amid concern that they may have to write off even more bad debt on investments in Dubai.

Credit Suisse, the investment bank, said yesterday that European banks are exposed to half of Dubai’s $80 billion debt pile, with Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is 70 per cent owned by the taxpayer, believed to have invested heavily in the region.

Barclays’ shares fell 3.13 per cent to 280.94p today, Standard Chartered lost 4.23 per cent at £14.50 and HSBC fell by 3.64 to 679.9p.

Read the full story now.

Millions of customers hoping for refunds of unauthorised overdraft charges were disappointed yesterday after a surprise decision in the Supreme Court.

In a landmark ruling, the five judges of the court unanimously decided that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) did not have the authority to determine the fairness of the charges — which can be as much as £35 for a single slip into the red.

The decision, which overturned rulings by the High Court and the Court of Appeal, means that an estimated one million customers who have lodged demands for the return of their money are likely to be turned down unless they can prove that they are suffering financial hardship.

Read the full article now.

More jobs are to be lost despite a promising bounce-back from the retail sector in the run-up to Christmas.

Alistair Darling today dampened hopes of a full economic recovery happening soon when he said that unemployment would continue to rise “for a while”.

Speaking in parliament, the Chancellor said that unemployment was “too high”, currently at 2.46 million.

However, he argued that the situation could be worse: “Because our labour market has been more flexible than in the past, although unemployment in this country is too high and unfortunately will continue to rise for a while, it is lower than in other countries.”

The rate of unemployment in the UK stands at 7.8 per cent, after growing 1 per cent in the last quarter to September and 2 per cent over the year. This compares with 10.2 per cent in the US, 7.7 per cent in Germany, 9.8 per cent in France and 17.9 per cent in Spain.

Read the full article now.

We are proud to have been in partnership with SagePay since 2005. The UK’s Number 1 merchant account credit card processing service.