Buying Online With Safety In Mind

Safety is one of the biggest concerns when using the internet especially when the tremendous increase in identity and credit card theft is considered. But with advances in technology making leaps and bounds over the years, applying for a credit card or making a purchase online is much safer than in the past.

Technologies for Safety

Secure Sockets Layer - (SSL)
SSL Technology is a way to transmit your personal data between financial or banking institutions and your computer using a cryptographic system that uses two keys to encrypt data--a public key known to everyone and a private key known only to the recipient of the message. The process is complex to explain, but suffice it to say that the two-key approach makes it impossible for all intents and purposes for an outside party such as a criminal to capture and interpret any data transmitted between two computers over an Internet site using SSL technology - because the criminals will not have both keys. By convention, URLs that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer support SSL.

Secure-HTTP - (S-HTTP)
A complementary protocol to transmit individual messages securely over the internet is using Secure-HTTP technology. Data is designed for individual messages. Both protocols have been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a standard.

History and Impact of Encryption
The security of sending your password across a network or for securely sending your credit card number online to make a purchase is dependent on encryption. Take a plain text message and encrypt it (turn it into a secret code) so it cannot be deciphered by anyone unless they possess the decrypt key (decoder). Encrypting has been used for over 2,000 years. A childhood game that you may have played by reversing the alphabet or using a decoder ring to write a message to a friend was a simple form of encryption.

When the Internet was in its infancy, encryption used 40-bits. This meant that a character of data could be changed into any one of 2 to the 40th power ways or approximately 1 trillion ways. But they soon found that with access to more powerful computers, a criminal could crack the 40-bit encryption in a short period of time. A much more powerful type of encryption was introduced in the 1990s that used 128 bits. Now a character of data could be altered in any of 2 to the 128th power ways which represents an unbelievable number of possible changes that would take over 20,000 years to break using today's fastest computers. This more powerful encryption completed altered the safety of sending your personal information over the net.

Online Credit Card Applications - No Safer Method
In conclusion, technology virtually guarantees that if you fill out a low interest credit card application online using a bank or financial institution's secure application page, your personal information cannot be stolen. When you compare this to applying through the mail and consider how many hands your application passes through, it stands to reason that applying over the internet is actually more secure.

So the next time you want to apply for credit card, go to one of the comparison websites for credit card offers, click through their secure website to find the offer you're interested in and fill out the online application. Another benefit to applying online in this way is that your application will be process within minutes rather than days or weeks and you can often get approval immediately.

By: ASAP Credit Card

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