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STAYING SECURE ON THE WEB
In the wake of the "denial of service" attacks on a number of major Web sites earlier this year, nearly one-half of 3,500 Internet users polled in a PC Data Online survey said they were more reluctant than ever to send credit card information over the Internet.

Internet enthusiasts often respond to such concerns with an argument along the lines of "You don’t think twice about handing your credit card over to a waiter in a restaurant or giving your card number over the telephone, so what’s the problem?" This argument sounds good at first, but glosses over the fact that such transactions usually involve merchants whose reputations you know and trust.

The Internet, though, is a whole different ballgame. There are thousands upon thousands of merchant sites vying for your dollars and, should you decide to make a purchase, you will probably not have any contact with an actual person. Added to this is the very remote possibility of an online eavesdropper intercepting your credit card information en route to the merchant.

So is it safe to make credit card purchases on the Internet? Yes, assuming you follow a few basic caveats:

– Buy from reputable merchants. Buying from well-known companies with national reputations is probably the safest avenue for online purchasing. You should thoroughly investigate unfamiliar companies before conducting business with them. In some cases, you can find out more about a company by visiting the Better Business Bureau Web site at "www.bbbonline.com".

– For credit card transactions, connect to secure servers. A secure server works with your Web browser to encrypt sensitive information before sending it out over the Internet, ensuring that only the intended recipient has the "key" to decode your message. Every reputable merchant should offer secure server connections. Recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator indicate a secure connection with a padlock symbol on the status bar at the bottom of the browser window. Another good indication is the addition of an "s" to the "http" portion of the universal resource locator, or URL. Always look for an "https" connection before sending credit card data.

– Use a browser with strong encryption. Your Web browser determines the level of encryption used when sending data to a secure server. Common encryption levels available for Web browsers are 40-bit, 64-bit and 128-bit. Internet experts recommend 128-bit, or strong, encryption for financial transactions. Simply put, this means that an online eavesdropper would have to try 2¹²⁸ different key combinations to break the code of your message, making the process far too time-consuming and expensive to be worth the effort. Both Microsoft and Netscape offer 128-bit versions of their Web browsers. America Online users will have to download Internet Explorer or Navigator to use 128-bit encryption.

Joe Hoyle, electronic media editor, ADA Publishing, a division of ADA Business Enterprises, Inc., "hoylej{at}ada.org"

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