n. Why should you be careful while making purchases via a website? Let's look at how the internet works, quickly.The user is transferring credit card information to a webpage. Looks safe,right? Not necessarily. As the user submits the information, it is being streamed through a series of computers that make up the Internet backbone. The information is in little chunks, in packages called packets.Here's the problem: While the information is being transferred through this big backbone, what is preventing a "hacker" from intercepting this data stream at one of the backbone points? Big-brother is not watching you if you access a web site, but users should be aware of potential threats while transmitting private information.There are methods of enforcing security, like password protection, an most importantly, encryption.Encryption means scrambling data into a code that can only be unscrambled on the "other end." Browser's like Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer feature encryption support for making on-line transfers. Some encryptions work better than others. The most advanced encryption system is called DES (Data Encryption Standard), and it was adopted by the US Defense Department because it was deemed so difficult to 'crack' that they considered it a security risk if it would fall into another countries hands. A DES uses a single key of information to unlock an entire document. The problem is, there are 75 trillion possible keys to use,so it is a highly difficult system to break. One document was cracked and
decoded, but it was a combined effort of 14,000 computers networked over the Internet that took a while to do it, so most hackers don't have that many resources available.
