Beware of *Free Offers* that request financial details.

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From my travel diary:

It is a beautiful morning here in Kenilworth in the hinterland of Queensland’s Gold Coast.

We set up the Eco Tourer caravan on the Kenilworth oval and found it the perfect location with that beautiful grassy oval to run on, the cheese factory , town and interesting old farm buildings within a short walking distance and a very pretty park area beside the river a short drive away.

I wanted to warn the gray nomads and those not  very sophisticated with internet buying, to be very wary about  a lot of free trials that are offered over the internet that ask for your credit card details. Many people are finding these are autoship programs, that become very hard to cancel and you can find yourself being charged, every month for something you no longer want.

I had such an experience once and even cancelling my credit card did not stop the withdrawals, my bank simply reissued another credit card, against my request and sent me the account.  I did eventually sort it out after a great deal of inconvenience. This is not what we want to be trying to sort out, while happily touring the country.  The 65 plus age group in particular are being targeted from sites like facebook with these *free offer*, temptations that can lead into ongoing charges against the recipients credit card.

Personally, I prefer to use PayPal for all my internet payments then only PayPal has my credit card details aside from myself and I can easily cancel payments when I cancel a service or product delivery.  I find it is a lot safer.

I know when I was selling on EBay many sellers hated being forced by EBay to offer PayPal because PayPal charges the seller a fee.  I loved using PayPal as a seller and that is the system I use in my web site stores that sell art cards, fridge magnets, postcards and prints, because PayPal notify me within seconds of a customers’  purchase and also when their funds have cleared. I find it an efficient and safe system.

Internet banking safety tips.

1/ Never enter the Paypal, site from an email. Only enter your bank or PayPal from the web address that you yourself put into your web browser.

2/Never, do your internet banking or enter any sites where you need to use your password, from an internet cafe as these computers are there for convenience, but cannot, be considered secure.

3/ Change your passwords frequently, especially if your computer is left unattended.

4/Never, use a word that can be found in a dictionary as your password and use a mixture of upper and lower case letters and a numerals, to form your password.