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Online fraud is one of the leading ways for thieves to steal your credit, rob you of your money, and take away your personal identity and your confidence to shop online. People are so wary of online credit fraud*and for good reason*that they don*t even shop online. Some people, and you probably know some of them, resolve themselves to shopping by phone or through the mail the old-fashioned ways.

This makes sense because, really, there are so many ways for people to rob you online. They could steal your credit card the old-fashioned way*right out of your wallet*and simply use the card number and its expiration date online. Or, more insidiously, they could hack into a online shop's Web site and steal your credit card information from there, either as you type it in or from where the store saves all its customers* information.

Scary, right? But then again, online shopping is so convenient it's scary in its own right! Where else can you find store upon store of every shopping item under the sun, without even having to leave your home? Where else can you auction on antiques, or get rock-bottom clearance prices on designer and otherwise expensive items? It's simple but true*if you are not shopping online, you are missing some of the best steals and deals, and most convenient shopping, around.

So there has to be some safe middle ground, right? You should be able to find somewhere online where can still shop to your heart's content, all the while feeling safe that your credit card information and your identity are safe. You should, and you can.

Thanks to a technology called SSL, or Secure Socket Layer technology. SSL works by making Web sites secure on the Internet, by encrypting or mixing up the data so no one but you can see what you*re doing on a given page. It basically works like a padlock on the page, so while you*re on the SSL protected page, no one else can sneak in, read your credit information, and make off with your valuable personal and private data.

How can you tell if you*re on an SSL protected shop site online? One way is to look at a Web page's certificate. This information will tell you that the Gap page you are on is actually the Gap's Web site, set up by the famous clothing store and not some fake site set up by a thief looking to steal your info. Another way is to look at the Web page address, or URL. If it starts with "https://" instead of the usual "http://", that extra "s" stands for secure, thanks to SSL.