First, when you place your floral order from our website using an SSL compliant browser, such as Netscape or Explorer, the order information is encrypted using a Secure Socket Layer. Persons using a packet sniffer can intercept the data being sent, save it to their computer, and do with it what they will. This practice, for the most part, is of little consequence for standard html pages and such, but definitely pose obvious concerns when you send your credit card number over the internet. Think of a packet as a pocket full of change. Even though it adds up to a dollar when put together, in your hand it is different sizes, colors, and values.
Packets work the same way.
A single web page or E-mail may take 1000s of packets to get from the server to you, where your browser puts them all together as the appropriate document. In addition, the encryption is different for each transaction. That is, each packet is separately encrypted, of varying size and each with it's own de-encrypt routine. Once the order information has been encrypted by the customer's browser and sent to our site hosted on an Orion Secure Commerce server, that information is posted to a protected folder. This folder is unavailable via the web or anonymous FTP, only our representatives have access to this information.