Questions and Answers - E-commerce and Security
Can my site be an online store? What is a secure server? What is SSL? What is GPG and why do I need it? How to I transmit a form securely?
Can my site be an online store? Yes it can. Our Online Shopper plan provides an e-commerce suite and secure server access, so your site can be an online business. For more information, read the related section of our Online Manual.
What is a secure server? A secure server allows you to receive and transmit information securely over the web. This allows you to receive credit card or other privileged information safely. Our Online Shopper account comes with secure server access. For more detailed information, please read the Secure Server section of our Online Manual.
What is SSL? SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is a protocol used to encrypt data transferred between two computers.
What is GPG and why do I need it? GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) is an OpenPGP compliant application which enables you to encrypt sensitive data on your web site. It is compatible with PGP 5.x and has very similar functionality. Our Online Shopper plan comes with GPG for free. If you are going to receive sensitive data at your web site, SSL access is not enough to guarantee the security of that data. This is because SSL only protects the data as it is transferred to your site, but not after it has arrived. GPG can be used to encrypt the data when it arrives at your site and it stays encrypted until you download it and unencrypt it on your hard drive. You and your customers can cave confidence that their sensitive information is kept secure throughout its journey over the web. For more information look at the GPG chapter of our Online Manual.
How can I transmit a form securely? We provide a special version of FormMail in your cgi-bin directory, that allows you to encrypt and transmit a form (using GPG).