Online Store Security with SSL

Online stores have become so common that a large percentage of online shoppers still forget to verify the security of the website they are using. Verifying the security of the online store is critical to preventing credit card fraud and identity theft.

A secure online store will use the HTTPS protocol to transmit information from your PC to its servers. This secure protocol encrypts your information so that even if the data was captured by a hacker, they could not read it in its encrypted form. But using HTTPS is not enough. The web server hosting the HTTPS website must also be using a SSL certificate. This certificate validates that the web server is from a trusted source and that they are indeed using encryption to protect your data. The presence of a padlock in the address bar or corner of your browser (location depends on the browser in use, i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc.) verifies that SSL is in use. You can click on this padlock and view the information about the website and the company that provides the SSL certificate.

For example, take a look at this Celtic jewelry website, http://www.repiland.com/. You can see that the HTTP protocol is in use on the homepage. No SSL security is in use. But that's OK because you are not sending them your credit card info. But now let's go to their Celtic jewelry online store. Then click on the "Checkout" button along the top navigation. You can see that you are directed to a URL that uses HTTPS, and there is a padlock in the browser window as well (location depends on browser). Clicking on this padlock verifies that the web server is using a valid Geotrust SSL certificate to encrypt the Celtic jewelry store. So now you can be assured that any information sent to the server through this website will be encrypted and protected.

Always look for the SSL padlock and always click the padlock to verify the date and name of the web server in the certificate. You will be glad you did, and you can sleep better at night knowing your credit card info was sent securely when purchasing online products (like our Handmade Celtic Jewelry and Celtic Rings).