Anytime a web page asks you for sensitive information, you need to be able to identify if the page is secure or not. The ability to recognize a secure web connection is extremely important as online fraud cases have increased substantially from year to year.
What exactly do we mean by "secure"?
Anytime you view a web site information is sent from your computer to the web server and from the web server to your computer. The transmission of this information is normally sent in "plain text", meaning anyone would be able to read it should they see it. Now consider this. Each piece of information transmitted traverses many computers (servers) to reach its destination.
Try it! - Windows Users, to see just how many machines your information traverses, follow these steps:
1) On your computer, click Start, then Run
2) Type "cmd" and click "OK" (or press Enter)
3) Type this in exactly: tracert
www.ssl.com
4) Press Enter
Each listing in the window is a different computer/router/switch (a "node" in networking terms). Each "node" represents a point at which any data you send might be recorded! It is not uncommon to see 20-30 listings.
Big deal, right? Consider this the next time you type in a password or your credit card number. Ah! Therein lies the problem. The solution to this problem is to encrypt this data for transmission. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) was created for this very purpose.
SSL uses a complex system of key exchanges between your browser and the server you are communicating with in order to encrypt the data before transmitting it across the web. A web page with an active SSL session is what we mean when we say a web page is "secure".
ALL WEB PAGES ASKING YOU FOR SENSITIVE INFORMATION SHOULD BE SECURED USING SSL!!!