Shop 'Til You Drop Tell your customers: Making Web purchases is getting safer and safer . . . if you play by the rules.

That neat something catches your eye as you're Web-surfing and you know it could be yours with a mouseclick . . . but just how safe is shopping on the Internet? The short answer is: as safe as you make it. For the longer answer, stop by American Express's tip sheet, "Shop Safely Online", a well-crafted five-page primer on buying without getting ripped off.

Boiled down, American Express' counsel is that if we use basic, easy precautions when shopping online, we'll do fine-and the key chunk of advice is to use a credit card. Why? "Your transaction will be protected by the Fair Credit Billing Act," says American Express, adding, "you generally would be held liable only for the first $50 in charges." Then, too, some companies, including America Online and Yahoo!, promise to cover even that $50 if you buy from one of their certified merchants.

Other nuggets of wisdom from American Express: Shop with companies you know; keep a record by printing out a copy of the purchase transaction; use a secure browser, meaning a late-model edition of Netscape or Internet Explorer; and patronize sites that employ Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) technologies so your data is scrambled and safe from hackers.