PayPal is a preferred method of paying for online shopping transactions for many because it is not a credit card. It actually directly transfers funds from your online bank account to the store that you are shopping at. This prevents you from accidentally missing a payment and having to pay interest on your credit card.
Signing Up
The first thing that you need to do if you want to use PayPal is sign up for the service. This includes linking your banking information that will allow you to pay for your selected purchases online. Make sure that you are diligent in putting your information in correctly and ensuring that you have created a safe password as well.
Online Security
Now there are a few key steps that you should make sure to do so that your online financial information stays safe and secure. The first is to ensure that you have closed all other windows that may have cookies in them. This may inadvertently get your financial information entered to the wrong site. Another thing that you should do is ensure that the sites that you enter your financial information into are safe, secure and trusted. There are many different sites that sell things an ecommerce style, but when using PayPal the onus if far more on you if anything is to go wrong. Often credit cards will ensure that your money is safe and secure by performing the transaction for you and reimbursing anything transactions that go wrong by no fault of your own.
It is important to use your better judgement when releasing your PayPal information to make purchases. If the website that you are on has deals that either seems too good to be true, or that seems to look rather sketchy, do not enter your information.