Recently,  I promised to help a friend set up his phone so he can get on the internet. I don’t know why… or how… but the concept of wi-fi passed him up, even though he just walked out of a store with a brand new smart phone. (Do I know what he expected for his smart phone bucks? No, I do not.)

So I will be putting him online sometime this week.

And with that comes the question of internet commerce. (See: Ways to get pulled into setting up someone’s phone.)

You see, he asked where I got my phone case, and I said “Amazon.”

And he said–a little dejected–that he did not have a computer at home.

And I said… you guessed it. Uhm… why don’t you use your phone?

So, despite having a phone, and having recently purchased a card for said phone that almost certainly includes data… And which can use Wi-Fi…. Yeah. I’m setting up the phone.

I’m going to encourage him to use gift cards rather than credit cards to make purchases on the internet. It keeps him from typing his credit-card number into whatever random site strikes him, and it limits the amount of money he can lose, even if he makes his password “password” and uses public wi-fi at the laundromat.

I don’t want to just buy the phone case for him, because I think making internet purchases is a useful skill to have.

But realistically?

Sometimes old-fashioned, common-sense security is the best.