A MESSAGE REGARDING SECURITY
Many people are uneasy about purchasing items over the internet using their credit cards. Constant rumors, urban myths, and misplaced technical information contribute to a confusing message that is difficult to decipher. The reality is this:
Credit card purchases over the internet are just as safe, if not safer than, purchases made at a local store, provided you use a secure transaction process.
(Check your internet browser's security features to make sure you are making a secure transaction.)
Remember, any time you go out to dinner or visit a local store, or anywhere that you might use your credit card - You are giving your credit card information to someone that you don't know . All a clerk or busboy has to do is to write down your number and expiration date as they swipe it through their terminal.
In fact, there are even devices that can fit in the shirt pocket of someone that can record credit card information and store it for future retrieval. The human link for credit information is by far the weakest. Hackers can break into sites, but by far the largest percentage of credit card fraud originates with unscrupulous business practices.
To intercept a secure transaction over the internet, however, someone must first capture your credit card information, and then break the encryption key to unlock the credit card number secreted within.
The first part - intercepting your credit information: Encrypted information all looks the same. Someone might spend quite a bit of time deciphering an encrypted message only to find out that it was a love note between two people who did not want to get discovered. Or a message to Grandma. Or a part number for an auto repair shop order. . . and on and on.
That is, of course, provided that they can actually crack the coded message. That's the real trick. In 1995, Netscape posed a challenge to anyone who could break their 40 bit encryption code. Someone did crack the code and deciphered the message. They used 120 Workstation grade computers running simultaneously along with two supercomputers. It took them 8 days to crack the code on a single message.
REMEMBER: They could only read one message, because every single message sent using the current encryption methods has a different coding.
Simply put, a potential thief would have to know that an intercepted message contained credit information, then use a colossal amount of computing power to decipher that message. All that is much easier than getting a job at a restaurant or store, where the thief could steal hundreds of credit card numbers in a single day, right?
As if that isn't bad enough, now there is 128 bit encryption available for Domestic U.S. and Canadian computer users. (You can upgrade your browser if you have a Netscape or a Microsoft browser and you live in the U.S. or Canada.) A brute force attempt to crack 128 bit coded messages would take the entire global computing power longer than the life span of the known Universe. We think that's safe enough. But you decide for yourself.
