Actually, it's hard to understand why so many people do get cold sweats about entrusting their beloved Visa card details to the Internet. After all, it's far more risky to send those same details over the 'phone when booking theatre or cinema tickets. Yet the majority of us do it without a second thought. And one frequently hears horror stories of thieves going through restaurant dustbins and digging out the credit card carbons for nefarious purposes. But for whatever reason, the Internet is regarded as a higher risk. Because of this, a number of companies have recently taken initiatives to try and beef up credit transfer security.
Netscape Communications, who pioneered the use of cryptographic technology in web browsers and servers, now employ a system called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This protects financial transactions by encrypting the messages with a secret key a random number that's known only to the send-and-receive machines. So unless the would-be hacker has complete details of the program's encryption and decryption algorithms, he, too, is going to have to try entering numbers randomly to see if one fits. Given that there are millions of permutations, he stands more chance on the National Lottery.
Another recent development is courtesy of Visa International and Mastercard. In March of this year, the two companies agreed on a standard specification for sending secure credit card transactions over the Internet. Called Secure Electronic Transactions, or SET for short, it should be available for public use in the fourth quarter of this year. If and when it is, Netscape has said that it will incorporate the technology into its own servers. With those two Big Boys on board, it can't be long before other credit card companies and banks sign up.
It therefore looks as though worries over security could soon be a thing of the past. With that concern out of the way, all the Internet operators will then have to do is get the damn system to work reliably and at a reasonable speed. If by some miracle they do, commerce over the Net currently a trickle could, in the future, become a flood. But don't hold your breath waiting.