I’m also not a big spender on eBay, because you never know who you are buying from. There’s no “professional website” and little way to tell who exactly you are buying from.

I’d say at this point I’m a bit half and half – I still trust offline more, but that doesn’t stop me from making half my purchases online from stores I trust more than a little store offline.

We had our credit card number stolen twice, with unauthorized charges. Because we use an online budget tracking system, we saw the charges within a day or two of them being made. We immediately contacted the CC company and the charges were cleared.

Still don’t know whether the numbers were stolen online or offline.

I suppose you could use separate cards for online/offline purchases, but I am simplifying life, and don’t want a wallet full of cards.

I’ve felt comfortable shopping online nearly 11 years now and it’s my preferred shopping method. My kids’ school actually asked me to give a mini-seminar on how to do online Christmas shopping at one PTF meeting.

It’s like anything else–do your due diligence and plan ahead.

And do you spend more using credit? Absolutely. No doubt about it.

Anyway, this post is great Duane!

Its so easy now with Online Banking, I agree.

Recently I had two unauthorized charges show up on one of my accounts showing online purchases. Since I check my balances and charges frequently (usually daily) on both my accounts, I caught them before they were even deducted from my account. They were still showing as card authorizations. I contacted my bank immediately.

The bank voided my VISA card and took the charges off. I did have to wait for about a week for a new card but that was the only consequence to me. I turned out to be just a minor inconvenience.

Had I not caught it right away, I don’t know how much more of a hassle it might have been. Possibly some overdrafts or something could have shown up but the bank told me that if there were overdrafts as a result of fradulent charges they would be refunded.

The bank did tell me that I would be required to fill out a form about the charges and sign it. I haven’t recieved it yet so don’t know how much is required with that but, so far it seems fairly painless.

I would recommend checking you accounts and withdrawals regularly whether you use your card on line or off. It’s easy to do online with most banks. I check mine almost daily and immediately if I suspect something might have been done wrong.

But I agree it seems like you aren’t too likely to have your credit card number stolen online, short of falling for phishing. I think that’s where most people get nervous about their credit cards online, hearing all the horror stories about people being tricked out of their information.