My mother-in-law thinks that shopping online is crazy because she thinks people can steal her credit card number from over the wires too easily and because you don't know if you're using a "real" shop.
She is correct. It is a real skill to be able to detect the dodgy websites from the real ones. There are lots of fake ebays out there as well. Sure, you and I can tell from the domain name, lack of SSL cert, spelling mistakes, or such, but so many people can not.
Your mother in law sounds smart enough to realise that she can not tell the difference. A rare commodity these days.
Trusting guarantees is a day-to-day part of life. The majority of people have no idea how a bank works but they still use them! The same argument goes for e-commerce. People should trust their credit agreements and ability to judge situations.
If everyone were as "smart" as you say by refusing to interact with processes they don't understand, e-commerce would be dead in the water. It's not thriving thanks to the <1% of us who know how it works in detail :-)
my mother is exactly the same. she thinks that doing anything online is inherently risky. I try to explain that when shes uses to pay for stuff in a shop, or over the phone, her credit card details are being transmitted over the internet too, but she wont listen.
There _are_ risks with shopping from your PC. Largely from key-stroke recorders. However, the 2 times I've been victim of fraud were both from card-skimming in a physical store.
