Your security is one of our highest priorities. When we refer to security, we mean the ways we make sure the information you send us remains secure.

IS MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER SECURE?

We have taken many steps to ensure the security of your transaction. Some of them involve adopting industry standards. (For example, the secure connection between your browser and sensitive portions of our site uses industry standard encryption.) Our aim is simply to enable you to make transactions with confidence. Every credit card purchase you make with us will be safe. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, your bank cannot hold you liable for more than $50.00 of fraudulent credit card charges. If your bank does hold you liable for any of this $50.00, We will cover the entire liability for you, up to the full $50.00. We will only cover this liability if the unauthorized use of your credit card resulted through no fault of your own from purchases made while using our site. In the event of unauthorized use of your credit card, you must notify your credit card provider in accordance with its reporting rules and procedures.
 
 

WHAT DOES THE "SECURITY WARNING" WINDOW THAT SOMETIMES POPS UP REALLY MEAN?
SAMPLE SECURITY WARNING WINDOWOn some browsers, this window can be a bit intimidating. But it simply means that you're entering the safest, most secure area of our Web site. This should be reassuring since this is where credit card transactions take place. Click on the "Continue" button to move to the next step. Going from Secure mode to insecure mode, you'll likely receive another similar alert message, just to make sure you know what's happening. If you don't want to see these alerts (a personal security choice for you to decide), then you may click to de-check the "Show This Alert Next Time" box. 
 
WHY DO I HEAR SO MUCH ABOUT WEB SECURITY ON THE INTERNET?
There are several reasons that Internet security is a newsworthy item. First, it's relatively new, so people wonder and talk and write about it. Secondly, the Internet is "technology", so people find it interesting to discuss and tend to be a little suspicious of it. The Internet has always thrived on openness. It has been the "Internet way" for someone to release something-a piece of software, a networking specification, a security protocol-and then have lots of smart people try to find flaws in it, lending their ideas for making it better. It has proven to be a remarkably effective development process. But for people unfamiliar with it, to see each new release of a browser, for example, get pounded on and picked apart, can be rather disconcerting. 
HOW DO I KNOW IF A  WEB SITE IS SECURE?
In order to be accurate, we're going to get a bit detailed here. When buying something on the Internet, there are three things to be sure of: 
  • Data you send is the strongest (128 Bit!) encrypted possible.
  • The site you're doing business with is the site you think it is.
  • The site you're doing business with processes your credit card and address information in a safe and responsible manner.
Points 1 and 2 are taken care of by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), the industry standard security protocol that we use to communicate with secure browsers like Internet Explorer and Netscape. When communicating with a secure server like ours, these browsers encrypt the information you send in a way that is extremely difficult for anyone else to decode. (You don't have to know whether your browser supports secure transactions- if it doesn't, you won't be able to complete the checkout process.) 
Many security experts say the most important thing is what happens once the merchant receives your order. We take several steps to keep things on our end as safe as possible. One of the most important is that our order processing is conducted on machines that aren't connected to the Internet, so there's no danger of people gaining access to them. 
 
WHICH PARTS OF OUR SITE ARE SECURE?
Most of the activity on our site involves the viewing of materials we've prepared and made accessible to everyone, so there's no need for these pages to be "secure". With a product page or an editorial page for example, no security risk exists because there is no "information" being exchanged.  The portion of our site we've made secure is, not surprisingly, the order form area. This is where you actually purchase an ad listing you've put into your Secure Form. The entire checkout process, from introduction to final confirmation, takes place in a 128 bit super secure environment. 

There are several ways to confirm that you're in a secure area. All SSL capable browsers have a symbol to indicate secure mode. Typically you will see either a broken or complete key, an open or closed lock or simply a closed lock depending on your particular browser. The complete key and closed lock symbols indicate that you are in a secure area of the web site. One additional note: some browsers give you a warning when you go from a secure area to a regular area. This lets you know when you leave our secure server and go back to a regular page.

Updated 2004