The risk of becoming a victim of theft and fraud has never been greater than it is today. Security of your personal information, particularly your financial information is extremely important.

The vulnerability of your personal and financial information when transacting online is relatively HIGH. However, you can take some simple steps to enhance the security of your information and protect your information against the risk of theft and subsequent fraud.

Today we look at fraud risk in light of security protection provided by websites you may consider transacting with. Essentially, it comes down to the difference between carrying out a transaction on a page address with http:// verse one with https://

The main difference between http:// and https:// is the security of your personal and financial information.

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transport Protocol, which is just a fancy way of saying it's a protocol (a computer language, in a manner of speaking) for data to be passed back and forth between web servers and clients.  The important thing is the letter 'S' which makes the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.

The S stands for "Secure". If you visit a website or webpage, and look at the address in the web browser, it will likely begin with the following: http://. This means that the website is talking to your browser using the regular 'unsecured' language. In other words, it is possible for someone to "eavesdrop" on your computer's conversation with the website.

If the web address begins with https:// your computer is talking to the website in a secure code with protection against eavesdropping. If you use internet banking, next time you login you will note the page where you enter your security information commences with https://.

When transacting or providing personal information online - look to see if the web address begins with https://.
If it doesn't, the security of your credit card and personal information is vulnerable to theft and possible fraud.

More information can be found at the Australian Government website - Stay Smart Online.