On Monday, May 11, the United Kingdom's Office of Fair Trading released a report on online shopping in the United Kingdom. This report, titled "Findings from Consumer Surveys on Internet Shopping" contained some interesting statistics that I would like to share.

First, this seems like a repeat of an earlier article about the famed McMaster report, but 28% of United Kingdom residents surveyed said that they were too scared to shop online. Of these people, 30% stated that they did not trust the internet for shopping. Another 20% stated that they were concerned about their personal/financial security. And finally, 15% said that they did not trust online sellers. I am reminded of the words of Ernest Johnson, a great Internet Marketing professor who remarked that 'trust is more important than product, price and promotion combined'.

Dan McCann wrote an article on scareware nearly two months ago. To review, scareware is a particularly evil scam in which a popup appears on your screen and alerts you that you are infected with a virus (or twenty). Then, the popup suggests that you buy another program to fix that virus. The problem is that these viruses do not really exist on your system - these programs are utterly useless.

Yesterday, Avelino Rico Jr and Geok Meng Ong of McAfee released a report about a piece of scareware that recently evolved into ransomware. A new variant of "System Security 2009" has surfaced. This new threat starts off like scareware - it finds many threats and asks you to install a security program to fix those threats. Problem is, after you install "System Security 2009", you cannot open any applications - the software tells you that the files are infected and you have to activate your 'anti virus software' in order to proceed.

If you, or anybody you know runs an online shopping site, please make a comment with your site's URL. You see, I would love to add a number of new shopping sites to the SmartSwipe database. The first five sites that are posted will even get a special bonus!

If you would like us to try out your shopping site and include the payment page in our database, please comment below. When your site is listed in our database, all of our customers will be able to experience the speed and convenience of regular safecheckout whenever they shop on your site. Thanks for the comments and I am looking forward to checking out what you have to offer!

Ask ten people on the street what a credit card reader is good for and the chances are good that all ten will say, "A credit card reader is what a clerk uses to swipe your credit card in a store." That answer is technically correct, but the SmartSwipe team wants to show that credit card readers are good for so much more than point of sale purposes.

10) Instead of that DVD you ordered you receive 500 Russian hats

9) You meet your first sketch artist on the bus

Hey everyone,

I want to let you know that the SmartSwipe is now for sale through the wonderful and innovative computer store Dell.ca.

Just as the tech community breathed a collective sigh of relief comes news that the Conficker virus has started to attack PCs. In an article in PC Magazine, security experts noted that Conficker has started turning an unknown number of personal computers into spam servers.

The SmartSwipe is a tool for safe online shopping. As such we are constantly going to different sites and looking at their structure and how their checkout process works. We have looked at literally thousands of shopping sites. Some are extremely well put together, easy to follow and give you an overall feeling of "I can't believe how easy that was - who needs a real store?" Others, not so much.

Some stores leave you in disbelief, some make you laugh and others make you want to buy things you didn't know existed. It is the greatest mall on earth. Whether you live in New York or Perth or Dilke, Saskatchewan you can buy whatever you want, whenever you want. Isn't freedom wonderful?