Security Certificates

The concern here is the interception of data in transit. In order to prevent interception of readable data, the data can be encrypted using the SSL feature of the leading web browsers. In order to utilize encryption, a security certificate has to be purchased and installed. This will enable your web site to encrypt data before being downloaded by a user and then unencrypted by the user’s browser. Information submitted to a secure site is encrypted by the user’s browser and then unencrypted once received by the server. 

Just because a webpage claims to be secure doesn't make it so.  Before entering information such as credit card information, your date of birth or social security number, verify that the webpage is in fact encrypted by looking for the lock symbol located on or around the address bar.  If it is not there the page is not encrypted.  See the examples at the right.