Earlier, people used to travel places to go in search of their favorite dresses, gadgets, equipments, etc. But, at present all these are made available through online shopping. Even groceries and house hold items can be purchased right from home and all these things would be delivered right at your door step. Online shopping has a lot of advantages, but the only major drawback of online shopping is the doubt it creates on the minds of the buyer which is, is online shopping secure?

Benefits of Online Shopping

Online shopping has brought every single commodity to the person’s viewpoint. As a result of this, the user need not go in search of the ones they require. If for example, the shopper is not able to find a dress they wish to buy in a particular shop, then they would have to go in search of a shop from where they would be able to buy it. But, this travel time and cost can be cut down through online shopping.

Apart from private organizations or agencies that have been in the shopping industry filed for quite some time, even some of the top brands have started their own shopping websites. Private shopping websites act like agents or mediators, who would sell all the products offered to the customers. Users would be able to surf through these websites and buy a product they wish from any popular brand or color or design of their choice. There would not be any difference in the brand quality of the product purchased from the brand’s website from a one of the same brand purchased from a private website. Difference is not much between the two, only difference is that, the buyer would be able to find all the brands and designs in one place.

Online shopping would be over the moon especially during festive seasons. During such occasions, users would look for discounts and offers from such websites. Online shopping websites would be kept busy during festive seasons and the competition amongst these sites would be very stiff and one can attain a competitive edge over the other only if they offer attractive benefits to their buyers.

Areas of concern

The main area of concern with respect to online shopping would be security. Payment procedure of most of the online shopping portals must be done either with a credit or debit card possessed by the person and even internet banking facility is also available. Fear for customers mainly arises from past instances such as credit card frauds and other loss of funds occurred to those who have purchased goods online. Hackers and fraudulent activities mainly focus on hacking such shopping websites, especially during festive occasions mainly because, the data traffic and financial transactions would be very high and so is the opportunity for stealing data.

In addition to these, shopping websites have even started providing their services in the form of mobile and tablet applications. Shopping websites based mobile applications are offered in all the different software platforms such as android, iOS, Blackberry etc. and as a result of this, the buyer would be able to select the product they wish to buy right from their hand held devices from anywhere. The benefit of this is quite evident, but the drawback here is that the security concern on the minds of the buyer would even shoot up. To stay secure even under such high risks, VPN is the only way.

What hacking can really do?

Hackers can hack the username and password details of the person and can steal all the personal and account details possessed by the person. With that, they would then perform unauthorized illegal financial transactions without the person’s knowledge. This would lead to a huge loss for the person.

Securing online shopping through VPN

Most of the shopping websites would advertise stating that, they have the best secured payment system of all. But, this alone would not provide security to the buyer. Users who surf through shopping websites using their smartphones and tablets should be more concerned about security than the ones who surf from their home internet network using their laptops or computers. When it comes to mobile phones and tablets, users might surf the site when they are away from home and even using public Wi-Fi hotspots and other public internet connectivity which are poor in security. But, on the whole security is a must for online shoppers.

Security and anonymous financial data transactions can be achieved using a Virtual Private Network. How does a VPN supports in providing secured access to the user? This would be discussed next.

Security provider – VPN

Encrypted bit network is the key to the security feature provided by VPNs. Bit encryption can be provided in the form of either 128 bit or 256 bit. A 256 bit encryption protocol would be more secure than the other. Protocols such as SSTP, PPTP, L2TP, IPSec etc. are also offered by VPNs. VPN subscribers who perform their internet activity within this system would find that, their internet activity would be secured through the tunnel network. Online shopping can be done with this high level of safety by the buyers. A sigh of relief can be experienced by shoppers since they would not have doubts in their minds which were a nightmare once.

VPN users would be able to obtain not only secured shopping benefit, but would also be able to gain access to other popular websites in the world. Users would be able to obtain other country IP addresses which would help them in viewing all the contents streamed worldwide. Uninterrupted high quality internet accessibility is another benefit of a VPN service.

Best VPN to secure online shopping

Amongst the different VPN providers in the market, certain groups of VPNs have got the reputation of offering higher bandwidth range whilst others have been known for the level of security they would be able to obtain. This list mainly focuses on those that provide security and anonymity for secured online shopping.

Rank	Provider	Starting Price	MoneyBack	Visit Website
	ExpressVPN	$6.67/month	30 Days
2	VyprVPN	$14.95/month	7 Days
3	IPVanish	$10.00/month	7 Days
4	Hidemyass	$6.55/month	30 Days
5	StrongVPN	$21/ 3 Months	7 Days