newbie: yellow lock item locate lower right corner, is it call SSL?

[sirpelidor]

Hi, some website I go to (bank, bill pays, etc) has a little yellow lock item at the lower right corner (after signed in).

Is that SSL (so the information during the transaction between 2 computers is protected)?

I don't intend to collect any credit card, or critial information. But I want to protect some simple personal information such as birthday and address. Would SSL fits that need (if not, what would you recommanded)?

How to implement those code in ASP to get that little yellow lock shows up?

Thank you.

[buntine]

Yes, it is an indication that the webpage is running via the SSL protocol. It simply encrypts all data sent between client and server.

You will need to contact your host or a third-party provider to get yourself an SSL certificate. They are not free.

Regards.

[Bullschmidt]

Yes, you may be able to get your own SSL certificate (perhaps at www.thawte.com) and be sure you have a Web host that will install (so perhaps deal with the Web host first).

Then you can access any of your pages with https instead of http.

But if you have SSL for your Web site that doesn't mean that everyone HAS to go in with https URL's. They can go in with http URL's too. So on the pages you want protected you may want to see how a user is coming in and redirect to https if needed...

For instance at my site only the sample Web database used to use SSL although SSL was available for the whole site.

But a tricky thing is that on your SSL pages you're going to want to be sure that all filepaths for included files and even images all use https and not http (or nothing because http is then assumed) otherwise the user will probably get a message from his browser saying there is secure and unsecure information on the page.

If you use secured pages on a different server you many want to find some way (such as by posting or via querystring) to pass in values such as for a shopping cart without using session variables. Or if you have access to the database from each server, you could store things in the database as a way of moving info from non-secured to secured pages or back again.

[sirpelidor]

Thank you very much, buntine and Bullschmidt.

It was very helpful since I can't go to a web-host (...i am a newbie running a web-host myself) and there's no one else to ask.

I guess the next step is to buy SSL cert, and add some redirect links to https from http. And I should be good to go :)

[Bullschmidt]

Good luck with it all... :)