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I am an avowed user of online shopping websites and I have often recommended readers to use them and save themselves some money. Of course when you shop online you pretty much have to trust the website you are dealing with in that when you pay your money you will expect to receive your purchases.

So I thought it would be responsible of me to warn that when you shop online you have to be savvy - be wary of scam websites. I regularly use Amazon and have always been very happy with them - you can pretty much anything you want from the company and this is what I like. There are though some sites which are there to do nothing else other than take your credit card details and nothing else - they are scam sites.

These sites are relatively easy to set up, they cost very little money to the scammers and some of them can look very professional. You might even notice that they feature a PayPal facility on them; this does not mean that the site is on the level though. PayPal only ensure security of their payments, not of the site using them.

The BBC consumer programme Watchdog demonstrated recently just how easy it is to set up an online shopping site which has no purpose other than to fleece people of their money; they called it the Unbelievable Gift Company and the results were very surprising.

My advice is to stick to the well known and established shopping sites such as Amazon; if a certain ‘new’ site has what you want at an unbelievable price chances are it probably is.

Better still have a look at this search engine for a list of popular shopping sites and for those in the UK you can check here for those sites which are safe.

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We all need a back up - support - during our lives and your computer is no different. Crazy comparison I agree, but seriously it really is important to ensure your data is saved in the event that your disc drive crashes or other problems ensue; all your folders will be wiped and all that information will be gone.

It has happened to me for sure; I spent the better part of eighteen months entering vital info while I was working on a particular project and didn’t think to support all my hard work by simply acquiring an external hard drive. All it took was a devastating power cut one day and the entire lot was gone. I cannot begin to describe how upsetting and infuriating it was.

Well, nobody thought to tell me how such a thing could have been avoided so now I am telling you - back up now and then and you wont suffer the same fate.

Popularity: 9% [?]