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iNet//Web Solutions
2811 La Cuesta Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323)851-6400
Fax (323)851-4570
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FACT: there is less chance of having your credit card ripped off when you shop on-line than when you give your card to a waiter who disappears for five minutes. FACT: there is less chance of having your credit card ripped off when you shop on-line than when you throw your carbons in the trash, which sits outside your home for 6 days. FACT: the perception that on-line shopping is dangerous, is very real, and very widespread. No one company and no one site will convince fearful shoppers that the possibility of having their credit card number stolen in transit on the Web is so small as to be immeasurable. So the answer? Make your site and your protocols even more secure. The safest way to transmit any data on the Internet is the scramble it, to "encrypt" it. You take a "key", such as "123456789", and then multiply and square and basically scrunch every character - then you transmit it. On the other end, you reverse the process, and you're home free. The more complex you make the "key", the safer your data. There are two branches of your site that will have to be protected: the link between the visitor and your site over which the credit card number is transmitted; and the link between your site and the Bank which is being asked to authorize the transaction. Luckily, both links can be made secure, easily and at little cost to you. Netscape and Microsoft both support "Certificates" in their browsers. If a Certificate is installed on the site you're visiting, encryption is used to secure all data transmitted to and from the visitor's browser. As an on-line merchant, you can purchase (for about three hundred dollars a year) and install a Certificate, which provides an umbrella of security for your whole site. Visitors' browsers will display an icon indicating that a secure link has been established, and the credit card number can be safely submitted to you. There are several companies who will provide the secure link from you to the bank, to what is called the "Gateway". You "hand off" the credit card number to the program supplied by the company you choose, and the next thing you know you get back a message saying "Approved" or "Declined". (This explanation is simplified a lot, but essentially that's it.) Excellent security is available now, but it's going to get better soon. Several banks and many of the largest computer software companies have already agreed upon and announced a standard to establish security on the Internet, called "SET" (for Secure Electronic Transactions). As soon as reality catches up with the smoke and mirrors, SET will indeed solve many of the problems - not the least of which is the perception that the Web is not secure.
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