How to Tell When a Website is Not Secure

In the past couple of months, I have encountered two situations where I could have risked the exposure of my banking and credit card accounts online. In the first circumstance, my apartment complex was encouraging me to pay my rent online with their new payment website. The second was with an organic beauty company that I had wanted to place an online order with.  I didn’t end up doing business with either of these companies. Why? Because their websites were not secure.

How could I tell they were not secure? There are two things you should always look for before entering your sensitive financial information into any website.

1. Https Address – The address on secure sites should begin with https, rather then the normal http.
2. Security Lock – A lock symbol should be displayed in your browser to indicate that the website is secure.

Both signs indicate that the website has a valid security certificate and that information entered into the website will be encrypted and protected from identity thieves as it travels across the Internet. These indicators were missing in the above websites, even though both companies were legitimate. Therefore, I decided it would be best not to conduct business with them online.

So now you know that just because a website is set up to take payments does not mean it has a valid security certificate. Fortunately, today’s browsers have security programs that usually warn you when you are about to enter a site that is not secure. As an extra precaution, it would be smart to get to know the security program on your browser and make sure it is always updated.

To learn more about security certificates and browser security programs, visit our Protecting Your Financial Transactions lesson in Internet Safety.