The Center for American Progress and the Center for Democracy and Technology recently released a report concluding that not enough is being done to protect the public from fraud on the Internet. "If problems such as malware, phishing, and spam are left unchecked, many consumers may lose trust and abandon e-commerce," according to the report.

What if a shopper could safely enjoy the convenience, lower prices, and choices offered by the world of e-commerce, while avoiding all the fraud lurking on the Internet free?

In 2006, buySAFE entered the e-commerce scene with a unique concept, giving sellers the ability to become bonded and display the buySAFE seal on their site. Once a seller is bonded, the purchase is guaranteed up to $25,000.

The buySAFE guarantee covers virtually any loss that might occur during an online shopping transaction. This includes, but isn't necessarily limited to, fraud, phishing, and financial misdeeds.

Last month, they grew their concept with the buySAFE Shopping Advisor, which is a free software tool that rates the safety/security of all sites within a search term. The tool also points to sites with the buySAFE seal, which guarantees the transaction.

Shopping Advisor leverages buySAFE’s advanced technology and bonded merchant customer base to provide a fully closed-loop safe shopping experience. "There is nothing else like it in the world as it provides comprehensive safe shopping for consumers from search through purchase and beyond – guaranteed," according to Jeff Grass, buySAFE's CEO.

While buySAFE offers a free service to the e-consumer, they aren't in business to lose money. Some of the due diligence performed on every bonded merchant includes ensuring they have an SSL certificate and a privacy policy describing how they protect personal information. Additionally, bonded sellers are required to allow buySAFE access to inspect their business anytime they choose to do so.

Shopping Advisor provides a tool to analyze e-commerce sites and provides a safe shopping portal, which consists of bonded sellers only. Once in the safe shopping portal every purchase is guaranteed within the limits of the bond buySAFE provides.

Shopping Advisor uses buySAFE's proprietary website inspection and assessment technology to analyze almost 100 different safety/security attributes of an e-commerce site. It then provides objective ratings on the site when searching with Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Firefox is on the way). This allows the shopper to make an informed decision before forking over their hard-earned cash.