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When the internet was very young there was great concern that credit card numbers (or any other personal information) could be stolen by hackers who spy on the internet traffic that goes in and out of our computers. This was a reasonable concern, because hackers can and do spy on traffic.

So a long time ago (circa 1994) computer nerds figured out a way to make the internet secure, at least on certain special web pages, where confidential information would be sent. The technical name for this is SSL (or secure socket layer). When you visit a page with SSL then all information sent between you and the main server is scrambled so that even if the "bad guys" spy on the traffic, it doesn't do them any good.

Since that time, sites doing business online have started to use SSL. You know you are on an SSL page when the URL to the site you are visiting starts with

https://

http://

So the best advice is simply to look for that little "s" in the "https://" portion of the web page where you are giving your credit card information. If you see it, then you know you are safe.

You may be wondering, if this HTTPS is so much more secure than HTTP, why doesn't the internet just abandon HTTP and use HTTPS for everything? The answer is that all this business of scrambling and descrambling data takes a lot of resources, and it's slower than normal internet transfers, so this technology is used sparingly. Maybe in the future computers will be so powerful that it is actually used 100% of the time.)

FreeStuffHotDeals.com only provides links to reputable businesses that use SSL to protect credit card sales. None of the companies that we are affiliated with would ask you for credit card information insecurely. But don't take our word for it--you should be in the habit of looking for the HTTPS anyhow. (If you find an exception, please tell us immediately, but we don't think you will.)

Here's another important tip: Never, ever, ever send your credit card through an email. The web has SSL, but there is no standard protocol for secure email. You should treat all email like a postcard: if somebody wants to take a peek at it, they can.

Finally, one last question that people often ask: is HTTPS absolutely positively 100% foolproof? No, of course not. In the security business, the goal is never to make thievery impossible (that just can't be done), the goal is to make it really, really, really hard. And the nerds who invented SSL really did their job well, because HTTPS is one of the safest ways to use your credit card. For example, if you make a purchase over the telephone using your credit card, there is a very tiny possibility that some criminal has tapped into your phone lines and is listening in on your conversation, right? Only a very paranoid person would worry about such a remote possibility--and yet, it would be much easier to tap into somebody's telephone than it would be to tap into somebody's HTTPS connection. I run an internet business and sometimes people write to me and say "I am afraid to use my credit card over the internet, do you mind if I call the office?" Of course I humor them and let them call the office, but if they were truly paranoid about credit card theft, they should prefer the internet over the telephone.