3 September 2005

Lock Icon Displays Browser Security

For those of you, who feel insecure about transacting business on the Internet, you should know that your browser can tell you when you have reached a secure site. What defines a “secure site?”

A secure Website has an address (URL) or a given page on it that starts with https:// instead of http://. It may use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt information and provide extra-safe user authentication. SSL secures a Web site by encrypting information and providing authentication. You can begin a secure session that guarantees message privacy and message integrity. Without SSL encryption, packets of information travel networks in full view. Imagine sending mail through the postal system in a clear envelope. Anyone with access to it can see the data. If it looks valuable, they might take it or change it.

VeriSign is the SSL Certificate provider of choice for more than 93% of the Fortune 500 and the top 10 U.S. banks. When you see the VeriSign Secured Seal, you know that your transactions are secure and the people presenting the site are the people who you think are presenting the site.

When you are viewing any Web page, a lock icon near the lower-right corner of the window informs you whether the entire contents of the page was protected by encryption while it was being received by your computer:

• Closed lock icon - means that the page was protected by encryption when it was received.
• Open lock icon - means the page was not protected by encryption when it was received.
• Broken lock icon - means that some or all of the elements within the page were not protected by encryption when the page was received, even though the outermost HTML page was encrypted.

The address bar of some browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape 8, and Opera 8, will change to yellow and display the closed lock icon next to the address to indicate the page is secure. This is in addition to the lock in the corner.