It can be tricky to know how best to proceed with interacting with businesses online. Sometimes some preparation and forethought beforehand can save you a lot of trouble, in the long run, should anything unexpected happen.
Cybersecurity 101 | How to Choose Secure Services
Unfortunately, many internet users, especially those with low computer literacy, often unnecessarily expose themselves to the risk of stolen data.
Below we’re taking a look at three key methods to ensure you’re only interacting with trusted services online – these are protocols that every internet user should follow in order to maintain consistent cybersecurity online.
SSL Certification – The Gold Standard
One of the best ways to be sure that a website or platform you’re accessing can be trusted is to check whether the URL you’re being directed to features SSL certification.
This is easy to identify, as website addresses certified for this security protocol begin with “https://” – the key part to identify is whether there’s an ‘s’ in this address.
Older and unsecured websites will typically be written “http://”. While not all websites you visit without SSL pose an intrinsic threat to the security of your home system, the risk is
much higher than with SSL-certified websites. This is because the latter offers an encrypted channel that mitigates the risk of malware, spyware, or viruses from being surreptitiously downloaded in the background, compromising your data.
Nowadays it’s also a standard measurement for the trustworthiness of a site, and can be found in evidence everywhere there’s an onus on providing users with a secure service.
For this reason, it’s extremely unlikely that respected providers operating in sectors that handle money, such as banking platforms or iGaming services, go without this fundamental layer of security.
It’s an easy way to identify a suspicious platform from a legitimate one, as the type of providers that can, for example, be counted on to deliver the best online casinos for users in regions across the world are only able to do so by developing positive consumer regard over time.
What’s more, as this establishes that a provider, such as VegasSlotsOnline, is a trusted source, their comprehensive break-downs and rankings of the different features and promotions offered by each casino platform they work with can be relied upon.
With so many businesses operating online in 2022, it can be a challenge to work out which can be trusted to deliver a high-quality service. It is for this reason that platforms like TrustPilot have risen to prominence and are increasingly becoming a web standard for businesses.
This is a global, crowd-sourced review platform that collects reviews and ratings from customers everywhere in order to provide a business or service with a comprehensive star rating.
As this star rating is weighted, and calculated across a range of pertinent factors, it cannot be easily falsified or skewed by malicious reviewers. As such, it’s seen as a relatively accurate means of assessing the reliability of a particular business.
Platforms like this are incredibly valuable to consumers, especially given the fact that no business is static. As such, the good reputation that a business could have built up over the years can be quickly eroded should they adjust their practices or fail to deliver on the quality experience consumers have come to expect.
In such instances, customers can make their concerns known on platforms such as Trustpilot, and this enables other users who would typically assume that a business is delivering service at its previous standard to be alerted that its quality has declined before committing to a transaction.
Only Use Trusted Payment Providers
One of the best ways to safeguard your payments online is to only do business with providers who offer accepted and secured payment procedures. There are numerous reasons for this – for one, it ensures that should anything go awry in the payment process, you have the cover of a third-party payment provider who can assist you should you wish to raise concern against a business.
Having a trustworthy digital paper trail is a very effective way to ensure you can safeguard yourself in such situations. Secure payment providers, such as Stripe, are also essential as a means of safeguarding your bank information.
If instead, you were to send your confidential bank account details to an unknown merchant via email, there is no way to ensure that they would not sell or use this confidential information, in harmful and unintended ways.