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Credit Card Applications: Is It Safe To Apply Online?
Are you wanting to apply for a new credit card but feeling
hesitant to perform the credit card application online? If so,
you need not be concerned. Advances in the technology of secure
e-commerce have made online credit card applications literally
safer than filling out a paper application and mailing it
through the US Postal Service. Here's why.
SSL Technology
First, banking institutions that offer online credit card
applications use the most up-to-date technology to ensure that
their web sites are protected against intrusion and data theft.
This technology is known as SSL, which stands for Secure Sockets
Layer, a transmission protocol that "encrypts" any data sent
between the bank and your computer, such as all the personal
information you need to fill out when applying for a credit
card.
Encryption
What exactly is encryption? It is a sophisticated mathematical
process that disguises data by altering the bits of information
in ways that are undecipherable to others. You have probably
done encryption in your childhood days when you sent messages to
friends in school using a secret language such as reversing the
alphabet, so that A meant Z, and Z meant A. That early game was
actually a form of encryption.
In the early days of the Internet, encryption used 40-bits,
which meant that a character of data could be transformed into
another character in any one of 2 to the 40th power ways, which
is approximately 1 trillion ways. But as large as that number
is, computer security experts realized that people, including
criminals, who had access to very powerful computers could crack
40-bit encryption in a short period of time, ranging from a few
days to a few seconds depending on the power of their computers.
Therefore, in the late 1990s, a much more powerful type of
encryption was introduced using 128 bits. This means that each
character of data can be altered in any of 2 to the 128th power
ways, a code which represents an astronomical number of possible
variations that would take on the order of 20,000 years to break
using today's fastest computers. The use of 128-bit encryption
has thus completely altered the safety of data.
Two Encryption Keys Required
Furthermore, today's
encryption methods use what is called the
"two-key" algorithm whereby the sending computer and the
receiving computer use both a "public" key and a "private" key
to encrypt and then decrypt any data exchanged between them. The
process is complex to explain, but suffice it to say that the
two-key approach makes it impossible for all intents and
purposes for an outside party such as a criminal to capture and
interpret any data transmitted between two computers over an
Internet site using SSL technology - because the criminals will
not have both keys.
Online Credit Card Applications - No Safer Method
In short, SSL technology virtually guarantees that if you fill
out a credit card application over the Internet using a bank's
secure application page, all your personal information can never
be stolen or broken into.
Compare this to a paper credit card application which you send
via the US Post Office. Think about how many mailboxes are
broken into each year and how many pieces of mail are somehow
lost - and you will now realize that applying for a credit card
over the Internet is actually the most secure method you can
find.
So if you want or need a new credit card in order to expand your
credit capabilities or to get bonus points or travel rewards,
the best thing to do is to go to one of the web sites that
allows you to compare credit card offers, then click through to
the secure web site for the bank you choose to fill out their
online credit card application. You will also benefit from this
because your application will be processed within minutes and
you can often get an immediate approval rather than waiting
weeks as you do when you mail in a paper application.
All in all, rest assured that computer security experts are
working hard to protect consumers from crime and identity theft
as Internet banking, e-commerce, and credit card payments are
increasingly processed online.
Copyright 2005 Ed Vegliante.
About the author:
Ed Vegliante runs the website http://www.Credit-Card-Surplus.com
, a credit card directory enabling the consumer to compare and
apply for credit card offers. Find links to secure online credit card
applications.
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