© Sofandani

Online shopping has broken all records by growing by 15% and crossing the mark of USD 35 Billion. As compared to online shopping, retail sales grew only by 3.5%. In these increasing trends, not only bigger merchants of online shopping such as Amazon, Best Buy and eBay have earned profits, but smaller vendors offering online shopping also did well.

Amongst these online shopping merchants, there is an online community for animal lovers called AdoptAShelter.com. AdoptAShelter.com is an online platform of animal sellers and service providers in the health-care segment. The earning of this website in turn is contributed to the shelters, rescue groups and humane organizations that are the members of this website and strive to benefit animals. With the increase in the online shopping trend, the website endorsed about 400 top players and 350 rescue groups and shelters.

Considering that the number of consumers shopping online is forecasted to cross the mark of 200 million by 2015, AdoptAShelter.com is planning to increase the number of shelters and animal welfare organizations, buyers and web traders this year. By this expansion strategy, AdoptAShelter.com plans to reach to masses and make online shopping of animals more quality based and thus by large help the animals. What a noble idea indeed!

© 401K

There is a tremendous rise in online shopping, but is it safe and secure?

Online shopping has become a hit with about 90% of the western world and the developing countries are fast catching on. However, with all the benefits of online shopping there still ligers concern. This concern is fuelled by a mid-January report of Zappos. The Amazon owned online retailer reveals that hackers have stolen the records of over 24 million of its online shopping customers. This occurred even though their credit card contents were encrypted in compliance with requirements enforced by Visa and MasterCard. Cryptographically scrambled passwords have also been hacked.

Zappos has sent its online shopping users an e-mail to change their passwords and beware of phishing e-mails or telephone scams. This is because as the online shopping clientele increases more data will be captured online, encouraging hackers to
steal more information.

Although online retailers are responsible for the data of its users, consumers too need to be vigilant. Cybercriminals prey on consumers using simple passwords says Stina Ehrensvard, CEO of Yubico, an authentication device maker. Hence, passwords need to have better strength. Another solution to safe and secure online shopping is to use a secondary e-mail address for less secure transactions. It can have a different password than used for banking or credit card management purposes. The quick checkout option on the online shopping websites can also be opted for because less information is saved on it.