Some people might be worried about ordering their personal checks online because of fear that their personal information might be stolen and they would be exposed to identity theft or similar problems. Such worries are applicable to any online purchase you might make, and sometimes the internet security and safety measures that are taken fail the purchaser and his credit card ends up stolen anyway. This doesn’t have to be the case with you, unless you are facing an extra dose of bad luck!
Due to the rapid expansion in the use of the internet as a virtual market place, companies go out of their way to ensure that transactions are conducted in a safe environment. So, there are a couple of things you can do to ensure that the website you are dealing with is fairly secured and so is your personal information. First of all, you need to check the website’s privacy and security statement. It should contain all the information about how the company deals with customer information and what security measures the website uses in order to keep your data safe and secure. This statement puts a certain amount of liability on the company because it states that it recognizes that the protection of client information is its primary responsibility.
Another thing is to notice the website URL when you start your check-out process. If the purchase process is secure, the URL should change from http to https and you will find a padlock sign on the bottom of your browser. These signs simply mean that when your information is travelling across the internet it is in an encrypted form, and cannot be decrypted, or switched to a readable form, except by the authorized personnel at the company. Thus, you should be comfortable that even if someone is trying to steal the information you disclose online, it is going to be in an unreadable form and that puts you out of harm’s way.
Websites that allow customers to make online purchases have their systems checked and verified by a third party, like VeriSign, in order to assure clients that they are using a secure website and that any information they disclose on that website is safe. You can check for that by clicking on the verification certificate provided by the third party to the website you are using. The existence of this certificate should give you more assurance that the website is actually doing what they said they would do in their Privacy and Security statement.
So the next time you decide to order your personal checks online, choose a reliable company that explicitly guarantees the safety of its customers’ personal information and rest assured that the internet security guys have got your back.