Special Edition Using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4.0

Working with Secure Web Sites

When is it safe to send confidential information over the Internet? You should transmit private information, such as credit card numbers and banking information, only when you can establish a secure connection using a standard security protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) over HTTP.

To make an SSL connection with Internet Explorer 4.0, the web server must include credentials from a designated Certification Authority. The URL for a secure connection uses a different prefix (https://), and Internet Explorer includes two important indications that you're about to connect securely: You'll see a warning dialog box each time you begin or end a secure connection and a padlock icon in the status bar, as in Figure 20.15 ...