How You Could Be Losing Money Online Without Knowing

As there are so many tempting things to buy online, there are many ways you could happily spend a lot of money. Whether you’re into fashion, food or gadgets, you can pretty much find any product imaginable available to buy online. While this is all fine as long as you can afford it, you could find you’re paying for things you don’t know you’re even buying if you don’t keep an eye on your bank accounts. Here are some of the ways you could be losing money without even knowing about it. 

Account takeover

One of the most obvious ways that you could be losing money without knowing about it is if someone successfully took over some of your online accounts. This crime, known as account takeover fraud, is when someone acquires your sensitive data in order to take over your online accounts with the malicious goal of profiting from the value of the compromised account. You might think that this sort of fraud would only affect your online banking accounts, but it can also impact any account where your financial details are saved. For example, people could simply hack an account you have with a certain online store and buy things with the card details saved to your account. If you’ve ever emailed your bank account details to someone before, a criminal could also try and hack your email to steal these details. That’s why it’s always so important to try and limit the places where your card details are saved online and also regularly update your accounts with strong passwords that are difficult to guess. 

Free trials that are no longer free

They say nothing in life comes for free, and often there is a lot of truth in that saying. For example, many companies will offer you the chance to try their services for a set amount of time for free. The only problem is many of these companies will ask you for your bank account details before they will allow you to try their product. This means if you don’t cancel your free trial before it’s over, you will be charged even if you’re no longer using the product or service. That’s why it’s so important to write down the dates when your free trials will end. If you’re worried you’re going to forget to cancel the trials, set a reminder in your phone to remind you the day before it’s due to end. 

Signing up at introductory prices

When you sign up for a new contract for something like a smartphone or even your broadband, you might think that the price displayed in large print on the advert is the price you’ll always pay for your service. The only problem is that some companies let you sign up for the service at this introductory price and then put in the small print of the contract that the price will rise after a few months. 

Make sure you read any contract agreement fully before you sign.