Ensure Your Personal Details Are Safe
How do you know when it is safe to enter personal and private details like personal contact details, credit card information, social security numbers, etc? The best way is to make sure that a little padlock appears in the bottom-right corner of your browser (this may differ from browser to browser). This little icon tells you that you are on a secure site with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) enabled. Click here for an example of a secure web page with SSL enabled. You can view the SSL certificate by double clicking on this little icon. Some browsers can be set to prompt the user for confirmation to accept the SSL certificate of a web site before loading the secure page. When you get a message like that, you can be sure you are moving to a secure zone where it is safe to enter sensitive information, but it is only safe when the SSL certificate is valid. Browsers like Mozilla Firefox verifies whether an SSL certificate is valid and tells you when it is not.
SSL provides good protection for your personal information and prevents the leaking of such information to hackers and other cyber criminals. However, like most things in life, SSL is not completely foolproof. Visit our Anti-Fraud page for more information about Internet fraud and useful tips on staying clear of cyber scams.
