Shopping online is just the same thing as Shopping Offline but one thing, in many cases, makes it totally different is that you don’t know who are you buying “a product” from or in another words “who is the seller?“

The first thing that you need to answer before buying something online is “Who Is?“

Thanks to the web developers, this can be solved with Whois.  It is an internet tool mainly used to discover who owns a domain or an internet shopping store.

The second thing that is very important is the payment method. To be honest none of the online payment methods is that secure. Which is why I ranked “payment method” as No: 2 in this Safe Online Shopping Guide. However just like if you were paying someone offline in cash, they aren’t always that secure either.

The most secure would be PayPal. PayPal is very reliable for customers / buyers but it is a sucker for the sellers. You might not going to find many merchants offering PayPal as their default payment method. The second best in my opinion would be MoneyBookers and Credit Cards.

The third, local bank transfers. Malaysian uses Maybank2u to shop online, different country uses different local banks. It is ranked third because it is not always convenience to pay for something, deducting the funds from your savings account.

The worst of all would be Western Union. Avoid using Western Union to pay for something. It is fine to accept / receive funds via Western Union but it is never okay to send funds to someone you don’t know using Western Union.