How safe is it to use a credit card on the Internet ?

Having a secure connection over your browser makes it quite unlikely that anyone will get access to your credit card details.

Intercepting a connection in order to retrieve credit card information is not that simple. It is much easier to steal credit card information by other means like i.e in restaurants or shops.

How do you recognise if your Internet connection is secure?

Most websites use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology to encrypt the credit card information you send over the Internet. You usually find this information on the website you visit.

Other ways of checking whether the conncetion is secure are as follow:

	The web address begins with "https" instead of "http", this means the connection is secure. (see example on the left)
	Your browser displays the icon of a yellow lock in the status bar. (see example of Microsoft Internet Explorer on the left).