How safe is PayPal?
EXPERT TIP - January 2010
I
am in business making and selling jewellery. In addition to my small
retail store/studio I have a website where many of my designs are
featured. I am about to add online purchasing facilities to my
website and want to know if it's safe to use PayPal and how do I
ensure my customers personal details are safe from hackers?
Answer
When considering any online selling and payment services you should give
consideration to the capability of your provider to keep both your
information safe and your customers information safe.
Credit card numbers and expiry dates need to be kept safely on a
secure server behind a hacker-proof firewall.
A secure server enables your secure webpage to "talk" to your
customers computer using an encryption technique that prevents
hackers from reading the data stream.
A firewall sites between your website or secure webpage and the
internet - only lets through "friendly" traffic and deflects
the unfriendly hackers.
The major online credit card processing gateway providers have a
invested in the capability to do this for you and it is in their own
best interests to do this for you both safely and securely.
You do need to read the their terms and conditions to check they
meet your needs.
Two providers that we trust and use in our online store are DPS,
a New Zealand provider of secure credit card facilities, and PayPal,
a California company owned by eBay.
You also need to ensure that any customer information that you
keep on your computer is protected from unfriendly prying. Talk to
your IT support company about how to do this.
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