Practice Final

Technology is driveing our lives without excuse, no body around the world can reject the technology, even if we do not like it, or cannot deal with it. Although the technology is very important for our lifestyles, online banking may be a greatest thing we can take as an example of technology. Online banking has many advantages, such as finding the best price since you are at home (Ball, 2008), and it safes your time, so you do not have to spend your time looking for financial operations. Nevertheless, online banking has many risks that push people to be curious about it. It might an easy way to steal your money, lose merchants, or doubled money in your bills.
First, in the Internet many people used their ability provisionally to steal the credit card numbers, and account numbers. "credit card companies lose about $I billion a year to credit card fraud” (Murlean, 2008, para.5). Hackers are standing behind this kind of crimes; they have several ways to mimic the site of real stores, or they pretend the owner of some single proprieties like cars, so some people fill in this trick, and lose their cards, and their money.
Second, many goods might be lost in the operation times; the company might really send the items, but the customer does not receive it, so one of them must pay the cost; moreover, some of these merchants come with different size or quality; so the consumer cannot return it back to the company. In some cases, companies might lose around $10 billion annually (Murllean, 2008).
Finally, in some online banking, you might pay more than you think; the bills of your financial operations might hold unbelievable numbers; one time AT&T company sent to me a $700 bill to my address, I tried with them several time; at least I bought $548 with non right, the problem came from the doubling of their bills, doubles in the a mounts and in the times; however, I quit my deal with them.
Some people argue that online shopping is" not only a time saver, but it allows you to get great deals when you compare prices of the same items from different online shops” (Robertson, 2006, para.1). This is a fact, but the risk of the online shopping is still dangerous of our money; also we do not find big gaps between price in the market and online price. Moreover, the items take several days to reach your home, but you can take it from the store once you pay the money.
In addition, some people argue that online shopping is quite safe (Ball, 2008); actually, I completely disagree, because the numbers show the opposite of this argument. “According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, there were over 205,000 complaints of internet commerce related fraud reported in 2004, …, Forty-eight percent of those complaints were regarding Internet auctions, while 17 percent were related to sales of merchandise” (Robertson, 2006, para.2). Therefore, we cannot give validity of this argument, because we already knew many cases that destroyed this argument from the beginning.
In conclusion,if we want to use Internet for shopping, we must learn how to deal with the technology. Also we must take care about our secret information, because there are many thieves behind the screen, and we must care about our goods that may have lost their directions, and always count your bills very carefully, or if you need my advice; keep far away from online banking.

REFERENCE

Ball, G. (2008, April 15). Is using a credit-card for online purchases safe? Education Redefined. Retrieved May 5, 2008, from http://www.bsu.edu/security/article/0,1384,86674-5031-17009,00.html

Murlean, J. (2008, March12). Protect yourself. MSN Money. Retrieved May 5, 2008,from http://www.moneycentral.msn.com/content/savinganddebt/Finddealsonline/P36487.asp

Robertson, C. Stay safe while shopping online. Retrieved May 5, 2008 , from http://www.majon.com/articles/shopping_-_General/shopping_online_126.html