Here is how an online encryption works.
 

Many have expressed concern at sending their credit card information over the internet.

If the web site is set up correctly, you should not be concerned. It's impossible for you card's information to be stolen en-route to the commerce site.

All you need to do, is verify that the web page you are entering your card information into is a 'secure' page. You can verify this by looking at the web page's address in your web browser's address bar.

It should look something like this:

https://and the rest of the web site with lots of gobbly gook.

What you are concerned with is the beginning. You're looking for the 's' that follows the http.

That means you are sending the information over a secure connection.

 

When your browser talks to a secure server as shown above, it receives what is known as a public encryption key. That is the information that your browser uses to turn the information on that web page into what is known as 'hash'. Basically nothing more than a set of random letters, numbers and symbols.

 

Look at the example below of a simple text file that has been encrypted.

 

 

 

Here's what it looks like normally.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Here is what it looks like encrypted.

 

.OFy,! q`!=`N >% B"k9 B-'l]NVz1=amZClm#7 E)7!:W6r Cv 6M=z%k% DN.M8I9&sj # AL?'vU,$1 3Qoхޒ{5͑|tf}k\
HxЄ R ?P Q?Q^ 5 mE#ʬz\sY*:JG|dƛt +c+yhڰBUS }Nz" !uL8F zj*ͬ[7?
p] Ḇ>ucvH8N͎Kژq4@O
gBRc @OS&\S"X*rU-~$Ɗ9tÍXH[k0>
>?׍ŇQy?Z3+wwM("{$ 0ÞMڇ(ƪJMM;E!W[9y s>nM)

 

Using the public key, all information that is on an https web site page is encrypted on your computer before it is sent out the wire going out the back of your machine over the internet.

So what your actually sending is the 'hashed' information-never your card number or other information.

Then, our shopping cart will store your hashed credit card number on the secure server until we (meaning only my wife and I) retrieve it in order to fill your order.  

 

So rest assured, when you order over a secure server, it IS secure.

 

Thank you.