by Gabe Goldberg

Twice recently, e-commerce Web sites have taken me to dangerous checkout screens — that is, Web pages which transmit data “in the clear” (unencrypted) — to complete online purchases. One of them even assured me “All orders are processed on secure servers.”

But without the reassuring padlock (or other secure-page symbol displayed by the browser when viewing a secure Web page) and Web address beginning “https” (instead of the usual “http”) I wasn’t about to provide information requested such as address, mother’s maiden name, credit card number, etc.
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