Banks, too, are getting into the act, letting you fill out loan applications, get account balances, etc. What all of these types of sites have in common is that they entail the sending and receiving of potentially sensitive information about you and your money. We're all familiar with online forms by now, those check boxes and text areas that let you send information across the internet. Most browsers will warn you when you are about to send information from a form that is insecure, reminding you that the data you send may be read by others. If you're sending a recipe for fudge, this isn't a big deal.
Some folks are understandably nervous about sending such information across the Internet.
Encryption keeps other people from reading the information that you send to an online merchant. Domain Name registration allows users to connect reliably to web sites. That registration is handled by the InterNic. Similarly, encryption is handled by VeriSign , a company that authorizes and licenses encryption software. View Security Info in your web browser.