Since the turn of the millennium and even years before that, people have started to do a large portion of their shopping on online websites. These days you can even see how the malls are emptying out slowly and on the last “Black Friday” in the USA and all over the world about 50% of the shopping sprees were done through online shopping and online purchases.
This means that these everyday online shoppers need to have the best internet security available because most people are paying with their credit cards and while shopping online may seem like an easy and harmless thing to many, most are not aware of the dangers that lurk behind so many doors on the web.
Malicious software, fake mirror sites, phishing techniques, hacked websites, unsecured money transfers, all of these are alive and kicking and as long as awareness is low, people will keep getting dubbed on the internet while trying to innocently shop online. This is why I am writing this article today, in order to bring more awareness to the importance of SSL on the web.
What Can We Do To Make Sure We Are Safe?
First of all never just straight away go and trust a website, without taking a few moments to see any tell-tale signs of bad activities that might be going on. If you take a look at the address in your browser (be it explorer, chrome, firefox or any other browser) you should be able to see the internet protocol that is being used on the page that you are on.
Before clicking the button that will submit your purchase and all of your credit card information along into the information highway always look for the HTTPS protocol. A payment page should always have an HTTPS protocol, meaning that it is using some kind of SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology.
This means that your information is being sent behind a wall of secured layers of data and cannot easily be hacked or stolen. If you are making a payment, even on a trustworthy website and there is no SSL protocol on the payment page, be aware that you might be falling into a trap!
Who Uses SSL – or Who Doesn’t Use it?
SSL technology was made for keeping money transfers secure, safe and private from prying eyes of hackers and malicious computer codes. So always look for that HTTPS in the browser address. Furthermore, if a website is hacked it will almost immediately loose its SSL certificate, in order to show that it has been hacked.
All of the trustworthy websites use it such as online lottery websites (LottoLeader) where people purchase lottery tickets online, ecommerce websites (dx, ebay, amazon, aliexpress) where merchants sell all kinds of goods, accessories and electrics online and government websites (social security payments, tax payments, hospital payments) always use SSL technology.
To sum it all up, never trust an online transaction that is being made through an internet browser if it does not have the SSL protocol in the web-address. You will usually also see a symbol that looks like a pad-lock next to the web address in your browser when the SSL protocol is being used to show that the site is secure.
