[paulgee]

I would like to know how safe encrypted pages are? For example, if a spyware item was present in my computer, could it read data I entered into an encrypted site like a payment processor (clickbank, paypal etc) or is this type of site safe? They claim to be 100% hacker free.

[lbfan]

I'd say it's pretty safe if encyrypted (online banking sites) but of course I'd never trust any website. Look what happened to those two data discs not long ago on the news full of details, turns out it's not really that safe when someone gets hold of them! So now I don't trust anything ahah

[TOGG]

As I understand it, encrypted transmissions should be reasonably safe, assuming they use https sites and TLS (Transport Layer Security) ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer You can check which level of SSL/TSL your browser is using. Anything lower than SSL 3.0 is not good, Opera uses SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 and 1.1.

What is not clear to me is whether a keylogger on your computer sending the encrypted data to a remote website would enable a cracker to 'unencrypt' it and use it to gain account details. Presumably not, otherwise there would be no point to encrypting the data in the first place!

I remember reading about an exploit about 2 or 3 years ago where some Russian crackers were supposed to have been able to infect the Microsoft servers used by some banks so that they loaded a keylogger on every customers computer, which then sent account details to a specially created website. Steve Gibson's ID Serve tool, which allows you to identify what server software any site is using, will tell you if a site uses Microsoft IIS or Apache/Unix software; http://www.grc.com/id/IDServe.htm

Not using IE for financial transactions should also improve your security.

[paulgee]

Thanks for the replies. I expect that any illicit keyloggers installed on my site would be removed by latest spyware which I run daily. There's always the chance that something might slip through, just before you are about to make a purchase so perhaps it's advisable to run spyware removal before making any purchase.