How secure are online purchases?

I'll be awaiting the answer. Except for one extremely slow shipper, I haven't had a single problem buying online, but this is clearly a separate question.

I was annoyed because when I reverted back to an older version of my computer format, it came with a bit of malware. I deleted, it came back. I finally wiped my strored data, dumped my recycle bin, etc and it is gone. So, I payed for the yarn I won on ebay and checked my bank acct. Yay!

If the bank's website is secure, and if your own computer is virus-free, they will exchange data over an encrypted connection. (If a web address begins with "https://", that means the connection is encrypted.) A virus in the middle will pick up the encrypted gibberish.

In principle, attackers can decrypt this gibberish. But in practice they won't, because decryption is expensive in computing power. From their perspective, the best line of attack isn't against the bank's computer or the connection. It's to get on your hard drive.

Once the attackers have a virus on your hard drive, they can monitor your keystrokes and read your screen. Whatever you know about your bank account, they can find out, too. So the key to securing your bank transactions is to keep your computer virus free. If you manage to do that, and if your bank exchanges account information through encrypted web pages, you're fine. (I know Ebay and PayPal do encrypt their transactions.)

Hi K,

Encryption technologies are rock solid. In theory they can be broken, but in reality it's not worth anyone's effort to crack codes for average web users.

But if you're computer has (or may have) a virus running which is capturing key-strokes and reporting them to someone, then you are at big risk.

You need to make SURE your machine is clean, and then make sure it stays that way. Both of those things are tough to feel comfortable with when using Windows as the OS.

Thanks guys. I scanned with malwarebytes which was recommended software at techie sites. It found no threats after I dumped stored data and my recycle bin. I feel pretty safe right now. My system is armed to the teeth.

Over the last five years, I have used paypal to buy on ebay more than 500 times with no problems. I also have my bank account online, with no problem.

Hear hear! (Italo-Western flute music starts playing to mark the coming showdown.)

If you use Firefox as a browser, you can add " KEYSCRAMBLER" which encrypts your key strokes.

FAQ s here ...
http://www.qfxsoftware.com/KeyScrambler/KeyScrambler_FAQ.htm

You can also install a personal firewall, which allows you to select which programs are allowed to initiate connections. This way, even if a virus invades your system, it cannot transmit any of the information it gathers.

Unfortunately, it requires you to know which programs you want to allow out. This is easy for most home users (iTunes, Firefox, IE, etc.), but difficult for corporate environments.

You can find older versions of Tiny Personal Firewall (newer versions aren't free), ZoneAlarm has a free firewall, or just search "free personal firewall" on Google.