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We truly believe that giving your credit card information over
a secured internet connection is vastly safer than doing so over
a phone, in a phone transaction the person on the other end may
or may not be authorized by his or her employer to receive such
information, and where the information goes from there is an unknown.
At Mane Street Hair the only person that has access to this information
is the owner, once your order has been processed the data is then
automatically deleted from our server. People buy from Mane Street
Hair because of the quality of our products and service. Our website
is one aspect of that service, but we would be doing ourselves
and our clients a disservice by offering a means of ordering that
didn't live up to our standards.
It is true that in the "early" days of the internet,
before it became so popular that there were significant security
issues surrounding the internet, there still is for sites that
are not properly secured. With the popularity of the Internet
& E-commerce exploding at such a rate as it is today incredible
advances in security have been made. If a site properly implements
these advances, as we have, it is virtually impenetrable.
Several
things conspire to make Internet security a newsworthy item. First,
it's new, so people wonder and talk and write about
it. Second, as I'm sure you will agree, bad news travels a lot
quicker and further than good news.
Most financial institutions or credit card providers either cover
all charges resulting from unauthorized use of your credit card
or limit your liability to $50. Granted, the time and hassle involved
in replacing the card is often far worse, but financially the
impact is kept relatively low.
In
order to be accurate, we're going to get a bit detailed here.
When buying something on the Internet, there are three things
you should to be sure of:
1. Data you send is strongly encrypted.
2. The site you're doing business with is the site you
think it is.
3.
The site processes your credit card and address information
in a safe way.
Points
1 and 2 are taken care of by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), the industry
standard security protocol that the Mane Street Hair site uses
to communicate with secure browsers like Internet Explorer, Netscape
and others. When communicating with a secure server like ours,
these browsers encrypt the information you send in a way that
is extremely difficult for anyone else to decode. (You
don't have to wonder whether your browser supports secure transactions
if it doesn't, you won't be able to complete the checkout
process.) We've included a visual representation below of what
to look for in your browser window to see if you're viewing a
site securely.
Most of the activity on our site involves the viewing of materials
we've prepared and made accessible to everyone, so there's no
need for these pages to be "secure". With a product
page for example, no security risk exists because there is no
"information" being exchanged. Anyone can access the
same pages by pointing their browser to www.manestreethair.com
The portion of the Mane Street Hair site we've made secure is,
not surprisingly, the checkout area. This is where you actually
purchase the items you've put into your Shopping Basket. The entire
checkout process, from introduction to final confirmation, takes
place in a secure environment and begins when you click...
(image
of "add to shopping cart" button)
There
are several ways to confirm that you're in a secure area. All
SSL capable browsers have a symbol to indicate secure mode. Specifically:
You
can also tell when you're in a secure area because the URL to
the left of the colon changes from "http"
to "https" to
signify that a SSL protocol is being used to communicate with
the server.
One additional note: some browsers give you a warning when you
go from a secure area to a regular area. The aim is worthy enough
to ensure that people know when they've left a secure server.
But in practice, the message is often a bit startling, and makes
it look like you've done something wrong even though you really
haven't.
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