If you sell stuff online especially digital product(s) then chances are that at some point down the path you will face some fraudulent customers who will try to rip you off. I sell many products online (some from my Tips and Tricks site and some from my other web sites). I have seen many of these tricks that the fraudulent customers use to take unfair advantage from the seller. You probably already know that I have a few WordPress Plugins (e.g. Simple WordPress Shopping Cart, WP eStore, Another one in development) that help you sell online from your WordPress blog so a lot of my readers have WordPress powered site and sell products online. Going forward I am going to try to write more posts on various fraudulent tricks that customers tried on me and how I handled it. Hopefully these posts will help improve your online selling experience as a shop admin. In this post I have covered some aspects of the refund trick that many customers use. The Good Old Refund Trick I am pretty sure that most of you who are selling online have a system that makes sure the customer only gets the product after they have made a ...

If you are using any of my WordPress shopping cart plugins (WP eStore or WP Simple Shopping Cart) then chances are that you have a PayPal account and making a bit of money selling your stuff online too. Next step is to keep your money safe so you don't loose it from hacking related issues or get fooled by some scam email. In this post I have shared two simple PayPal security related tips that you can start using and add that extra layer of security and sleep better at night. The first one is to add more protection around your PayPal account login. Use The PayPal security key The security key gives you an extra layer of security when you log in to your PayPal account. It creates random security codes to use along with your regular username and password. It’s like a combination lock for your account – designed to let you in and keep others out – except that the combination always changes. It comes in 2 types, each with different advantages: Security key: This is a small device, the size of a credit card that you carry with you. It creates a unique security code that you use to log in ...

You have started a blog to share your opinion with the World Wide Web. Someone stumbles upon one of your articles. He likes it, and posts it on Digg. Now it gets everyone's attention. Visitors come pouring into your site. Your revenue starts to go up. Definitely good news! But now there is a catch. You are now the target of the 'bad crowd' of the Internet, spammers, hackers and leechers. It's time to toughen up your innocent little Wordpress site. The .htaccess file is the easiest and the cheapest (actually it's free!) solution to secure a Wordpress blog. What is a .htaccess File? The .htaccess file is a configuration file for use on web servers running the Apache Web Server software. When a .htaccess file is placed in a directory which is in turn "loaded via the Apache Web Server", then the .htaccess file is detected and executed by the Apache Web Server software. It is often used to specify the security restrictions for the particular directory. In this article I'm going to show you how to strengthen your site's security by adding/changing a few lines in this file. Before you make any changes, it might be a good idea to take a backup ...

I don't need to tell you the importance of using strong passwords when creating user accounts online. Passwords are keys to accessing your online accounts or your computer. Using strong passwords are vital in protecting your identity and stopping others from hijacking your account. In this Post I have shared a trick to create strong but memorable passwords that I learned a few days ago. What is password strength? According to WikiPedia: Password strength is a measurement of the effectiveness of a password as an authentication credential. Specifically, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to correctly guess it. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and randomness. How to create a Strong Password? We all know the common guidelines for choosing a strong password: Include numbers, symbols, upper and lowercase letters Password should be more than 8 characters long. Avoid any password based on repetition, dictionary words, letter or number sequences, usernames, relative or pet names, or biographical information (birth day). Now the problem with creating random strong passwords are that they are very hard to remember. So once you start having to memorize a number of them it ...

I have been revisiting the various security settings of my WordPress blog after the sudden database table corruption of this blog for unknown reason last week. In this post I have highlighted some of the security tips that can help protect your blog from possible outside attacks. Use Strong Passwords for all Entry Points I was surprised to find out how many of my friends use the WordPress admin password generated by WordPress during install time and thinks that their blog is protected from attacks as they are using a strong password! The WordPress admin password generated during install time is normally pretty strong (consists lowercase and uppercase letters with numbers and symbols) so there is nothing wrong with that. I was mainly shocked to find out that their ftp/cPanel password for that domain is not that strong. It gets even better... one of them were using his partners name as the password (Did I mention that his partner's name was mentioned on his blog's 'About' page?)! The ftp/cPanel password for your domain is equally important. If someone can access your cPanel then that person can delete your WordPress database from the cPanel->Databases->MySQL Databases. Anyway, the bottom line is to use ...