Zombie wants cake...

[soc_puppet]

So, today was my BFF's birthday. Hooray, birthday! Aging! Surviving another year! ...And stuff!

She made a nice, big lunch/dinner thing (homemade pot pies *_*) and a cheesecake. Her father showed up around 1:40, and then her brother and his girlfriend showed closer to 3:00, which was when the actual eating took place. After the cheesecake was mostly gone (there's still a twelfth left in the fridge, or there was, last I knew, and I totally have the intent of noming all over it), we sat around and played Apples to Apples for. A very long time. I gave in and plead exhaustion around a quarter to six. Did not need quite so much socializing today, especially on top of vigorous cleaning. I'm about ready to collapse, and it's not even eight o'clock =_=


Made a mini brain slug today while we were sitting around between having finished cleaning and people showing up. I'm planning to pin it to my Hat of Many Buttons.


Speaking of buttons, I think I'm about ready to bite the bullet and get an account for the purchasing of things online. F'list, help me out! What do you suggest for the making of online payments? Thus far the only suggestion I have is "credit card is better than debit card," but I'm assuming you guys might have a few tips you'd be willing to share, maybe? Things like, oh, if PayPal really is the best (read: most widely accepted/used) option, or what do you do to try and keep your transactions safe, etc. I want to buuuyyy thiiiiings :X


Did things at CFUD last night, resulting in hilarity that I got to see this morning. Hadn't realized how much I missed causing general mayhem and havoc there. I'll have to see about popping in and Audiencing more often.


Anyhow. I'm off to attempt to raid the last piece of cheesecake from the fridge, provided it's still there. And if not, there's always tea ♥

Comments

[ytak.livejournal.com]

Paypal is accepted -a lot- of places. Seriously, its accepted places I wouldn't have thought. Which is nice because then you don't have to file out your credit card info all over the place. I'm not sure if it is the best but the polifiration of it works heavily in its favor.

[soc_puppet]

That's good, at least. I'm fond of filling things out once and then never again. Paperwork is the enemy. The enemy!

[ytak.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Paperwork is the enemy. Especially when filling out the same information three times for the same thing.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Paypal is seriously accepted almost everywhere, and is safer because fewer databases will have your bank/CC info, etc. I haven't heard that CC is better than debit, though; do you happen to know why?

[soc_puppet]

:O I didn't know that.

The person who suggested that had her identity stolen last year. She says that when it's a credit card, at least it's their money and not yours. ...'Course, my family's always done that thing where you set up your credit card to be paid automatically from your checking account, so I'm guessing it might not make as much of a difference in my case?

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I see.

The question when buying stuff online is not just can you trust the merchant, but what is the likelihood of that merchant's stuff getting hacked or whatever and people's info getting stolen. When you pay with many things through paypal, only paypal has your info, so statistical chances that bad luck will strike in that area are lower (plus paypal is pretty unlikely to ever get hacked, since their entire business revolves around keeping people's info safe).

[soc_puppet]

Yeah, it's made her a little more paranoid about that sort of stuff.

That's sounding pretty good, actually. I'll probably double-check with my friend on her circumstances before doing anything definite, but this is definitely bolstering my confidence in PayPal.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

In the interest of full disclosure here, their customer service sucks donkey balls. But I do believe them to be the safest and most widely-used choice for dealing with small online businesses.

[soc_puppet]

XD Yeah, I thought I'd picked up something about that somewhere. I suppose, if I had to pick one, it might be better to go with the one that would give you fewer problems in the first place, after all.

[cucarache.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that PayPal, while it provides a worthy service, is actually in the business of gathering personal information. That may just be my personal paranoia, but there you go. Perhaps I'll touch on that again later.

Debit cards: While I'm not a lawyer (nor do I even play one on TV), my understanding is that, while credit cards are protected by law limiting the cardholder's liability to a maximum of $50 against fraudulent use, debit cards are not so protected. That certainly seemed to be the case when a young woman I know had her identity hijacked. (If we're talking about the same person here, that was now two years ago.)

With credit cards, the trick is to find one that will allow you to be really versatile in creation of one-time use numbers. With my MasterCard (issued through Edward Jones Investments), I go to their web site and say that I want a special, custom number. I tell it for how long I want it to be valid (in the range of from two to twelve months) and what limit I want on the number. I then am issued online a credit card number, security code and expiration date which I can then use to order something online somewhere else. So, if I'm shopping online for two widgets and a thingamabob, I do my shopping, I find that the items, tax (if applicable) and shipping total up to $137.53, I go to my credit card's web site and get a temporary use number valid for up to $140 and then use that. In this fashion, at least vendors all over the intarweb don't have a number they can fraudulently use or even be hacked out of for others to fraudulently use, because the balance on the number is pretty much shot anyway.

Either way (a good credit card company such as I have described or PayPal), you're at least somewhat screwed if someone hacks the issuer (credit card company in my case, or PayPal in the other instance). But with the credit card company, my liability is limited by law as described above. With PayPal, if it dips into your bank account, things can get more complicated.

Oh, and I suggest that you not tie your purchases directly to your bank account. In case fraud happens, that is a speed bump worth leaving in place (IMO, of course).

Edit (I had to copy my previous comment, delete my previous comment and paste into a new comment to edit this, that seems complex): I understand that some other credit card issuers also provide good flexibility for one-time numbers. While I don't have an eBay issued card, I've been told that this is one card that does this, too.

Second edit: Coming back briefly to PayPal, when one uses a credit card to pay them, they raise serious fuss about frequently changing the credit card number. I found this out while using my one-time use numbers and went through eight or ten numbers in a two month period. I don't think this is something about which they should be fussing.

[soc_puppet]

Useful, thank you ♥ Also, I'm pretty sure the "edit comment" feature is Paid Accounts Only at the moment, or possibly maybe Sponsored ("Plus") Accounts and above; Basic (Free) Accounts hardly get squat.