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Our guide, 'Tips for Safe and Secure Online Shopping of Sex Toys,' is an effort to navigate you through this intricate process. We'll provide you with advice and precautions to consider while venturing in this personal pursuit, aiming to keep your experience discrete, enjoyable and most importantly, secure.
Strap yourself in for a virtual journey that aims to keep your private purchasing endeavors just as they should be - private and worry-free. Let's dive into the world of adult online shopping with safety as our priority.
There are two kinds of online sex shops. Legit stores and scam stores where you are bombarded with shady NSFW advertisements every two seconds.
Use this checklist to make sure your money is not wasted.
1. Check Website Credentials
The first thing you want to check when you open an adult sex store is to check the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. All you have to do is note if the website URL starts with HTTPS. The “S” at the end confirms the website is SSL-certified.
This is a layer of encryption to hide the data sent from a browser to a website from hackers.
Without it, you are practically giving hackers permission to steal your data. If you are going to add your credit card information and mailing address to a website, you want it to be secure.
2. Buy From a Reputable Store
Not all online stores are trustworthy. But how do you find the reputable ones?
For one, reputable doesn’t mean popular. It’s unfair to pass up on new adult toy stores only because they have not been around for the last 15 years. Especially since you have a high chance of getting huge discounts from new stores.
There are other indicators you can use to determine the legitimacy of a website.
- Is the website easy to navigate?
- Does it have lots of pictures and detailed descriptions of the products?
- Do you see reviews from real people?
If the answers to these questions are yes, the website is worth buying from.
You also want to check reviews outside the website. See what the reviews have to say about the products and the shipping policies.
If you want to play it super safe, you can buy your adult toys from Amazon. But Amazon hosts both first-party and third-party sellers. So, the shipping policies can be pretty confusing.
Third-party vendor's shipping methods might not match first-party vendors, so there’s a huge possibility of you getting a non-discreet package for your order.
By buying from Amazon, you might also miss out on offers and discount coupons independent retailers have on their websites.
Plus, your order history and suggestions will mention sex toys. If you are sharing your account with others, it’s one dead giveaway.
3. Check Their Return Policy
Sex toy shops have a stricter return policy than your general retail stores. For good reasons.
This is an intimate product you are buying. One which will come in contact with your body fluids.
Would you be comfortable if you knew someone else got the same dildo you got before you? Will you feel safe about using their returned dildo?
No, right? It will open the door to all kinds of STI-related nightmares. After all, Dr. Alyssa Dweck, MD and OB/GYN at the Mount Kisco Medical Group, suggests putting on a condom on the sex toy even while sharing it with a partner.
So, almost all adult toys are non-returnable in these stores.
However, some stores like XOXTOYS might offer a partial or full refund if the item is:
- Faulty or defective
- Returned 30 days from within delivery with clear proof of why
- Has signs of being used by someone else.
If you do return an item, the shipping cost will be deducted from your pocket or the store might cut it from your refund money.
Sometimes, the retail store might have clear return policies but the seller does not.
Due to how complex returns are with online sex toy stores, you should read the return policies properly. There are items like toy cleaners, where you might get refunds with no questions asked.
But if the toy comes in direct contact with your body, chances of a return or refund are low.
And you want the adult toy store to be strict about it. Because this policy protects you from receiving someone else’s used items.
4. Buy Smart Toys Only From Trusted Manufacturers
The retail stores and vendors are not the only ones responsible for your safety. With smart toys, you should look into the manufacturer.
Smart sex toys can come with lots of security vulnerabilities. For example, the Cellmate Chastity Cage from the company Qiui came with an app which lets its users lock and unlock the chastity belt remotely.
Soon after the security firm Pen Test Partners found multiple security issues with the app. A person with basic hacking knowledge could lock the user into the cage and stop other authorized users from unlocking it. In fact, this did happen to some users of the belt.
So, before you buy a smart sex toy from a retail store, you should:
- Find out if there have been complaints about security issues in the toy.
- Check if the developers frequently roll out security updates
- Download the control app before you buy the toy. You can test out how secure the app is yourself first.
More than anything, you should look into whether there are reviews where the user suspects the manufacturer is selling their data.
