The following post is a guest post written by Jack.
In the year 2017 alone, about 1.66 billion people were estimated to have bought one thing or the other online. That number is only bound to go up with e-retail sales estimated to reach 4.48 trillion by the year 2021 as opposed to the 2.3 trillion figure obtained in 2016.
This means one thing; a lot of people are now embracing the online shopping model. Quite frankly, the reason is not far-fetched.
You can be in any part of the world and get anything you wanted on the internet. You wouldn’t even need to leave the comfort of where you were to make that happen. In addition to that, you are given a lot of options to choose from when you browse from online vendors as compared to physical retail stores.
Be that as it may, you might not be using online shopping to its full potential. In fact, you could be missing out on a lot of deals, discount offers, promotions, and price slash anytime you proceeded to check out. That is not to mention how potentially exposed you are to hackers and scammers.
That is why we have put up this piece.
At the end of this article, we believe you would have been a better idea of how a VPN helps you find deals and secure payments across different online retailer platforms. Let’s get right into it then, shall we?
1 Beat price discrimination
Some online retailers believe those living in countries perceived to be more affluent should naturally have a higher spending power than buyers from other countries. They then take advantage of this belief to make sure the former set of people pay more for products than the latter.
This is called price discrimination.
You can use a VPN to change your IP address and connect to the online store again like you were from another country. By so doing, you should be able to get the basic price at which the item was supposed to have been sold for.
Imagine shaving off all those extra bucks every time you placed an order from now on.
2 Find promotions and deals
It’s holiday season, and promotions are in the air. Certain online retailers throw discounts only available to the local region that you can only enjoy using an IP address from there.
Guess what? You don’t have to take a flight across the world to get a cut of the pie. You can simply log onto the server of the deal location from wherever you are and take part in the promotions too.
Provided you’ve got a VPN to change your location, that is.
3 Secure your payments
Online retailers require you to enter your credit/ debit card details when you’re paying for stuff you bought. Should hackers strike such a website, they will be able to make away with the payment details of many customers like you. They can thus proceed to clean out your wallets and financial accounts
That is why these online retailers have gone the extra mile of ensuring their platforms are secure enough against attacks. However, slips happen, and you don’t want to be on the wrong end of that. Possible cases of slips can be:
- Connecting to the online shop from a public Wi-Fi network from which a hacker snoops around for your information
- Connecting to a rogue Wi-Fi network which leaks all your data – including payment details – to a scammer at the other end
- Paying online with a personal network which is, unknown to you, being monitored, and so much more.
No matter what way the leak might happen, a VPN will be there to take care of the problem. Layering your internet connection over one of these will ensure your data is sent through secure tunnels till it gets to the target destination (online retailer).
No one (but you) would then be able to see what payment details you enter, and your entire activity on the internet too.
With a VPN, you can also get flight tickets for cheaper since their prices are sometimes hyped up based on the location they are being bought from. The same goes for hotel bookings and securement of other related commodities.
Even if price discrimination and dynamic pricing are not a problem for you, securing your payment details should be convincing enough.
Writer’s bio:
Jack is an accomplished cybersecurity expert with years of experience under his belt at TechWarn, a trusted digital agency to world-class cybersecurity companies. A passionate digital safety advocate himself, Jack frequently contributes to tech blogs and digital media sharing expert insights on topics such as whistleblowing and cybersecurity tools.