If you are giving your personal information to an online vendor what are you doing to see that your data is secure? Is your vendor doing enough?
There are a number of structured settlement firms now using the convenience of the Internet as a means to intake structured settlement cases and reduce the flow of paper. Progress is moving in the right direction. However since some include personal identifiable and/or confidential information. Here are a few things to consider before using the vendor’s online service.
Do you need a password to get into the vendor’s separate private client area before you enter the information? If so, are passwords encrypted?
Does the web site owner have a valid Secured Socket Layer ("SSL") certificate of the highest possible cypher strength to take advantage of secure browsers? If it does such SSL certificate will mostly likely be linked from the SSL vendor logo seal on the home page or on each page of the website to the SSL vendors web site for verification. See if there’s a picture of a lock in the corner of the browser window and if the URL of the page starts with https:// instead of http://. Look for some of the major vendors like Verisign, Thawte, Commodo. Some of the hosting vendors like GoDaddy.com also offer SSL certificates. We’ve got one (click link and see bottom of page)
Does the website have a stated and easily verifiable privacy policy validated by an independent authority such as Truste? We’ve got one (click link)
Leave a Reply