We have taken many steps to ensure the security of your transaction. These involve adopting industry standards. (For example, the secure connection between your browser and sensitive portions of our site uses industry standard encryption.)

To show our faith in this system, we guarantee it. There is no risk, period. If anything happens, we'll make sure that you owe nothing. Our aim is simply to enable you to make transactions with confidence.

It's important to know that since lasergifts.com went online in 1999, there have been no confirmed cases of fraud reported by customers as a result of credit card purchases made here.

Why have I heard so much about security on the Internet?

Several things conspire to make Internet security a newsworthy item. First, it's relatively new, so people wonder and talk and write about it. Secondly, the Internet is "technology", so people find it interesting to discuss. And tend to be a little suspicious of it.

The Internet is built and thrives on openness. It has been the "Internet way" for someone to release something—a piece of software, a networking specification, a security protocol—and then have lots of smart people try to find flaws in it, lending their ideas for making it better. It has proven to be a remarkably effective development process. But for people unfamiliar with it, to see each new release of a browser, for example, get picked apart, can be rather disconcerting.

What's the worst thing that could happen?

Regardless of what happens on our site — a slip of the mouse (unlikely), a security breach (highly unlikely) — there is no risk to you. In the case of fraud, we'll assume all liability for what you owe. In most states, this means that we'll pick up the first $50, and the credit card company takes responsibility for the rest. In addition, we'll do our very best to work with the credit card company to minimize the hassle for you.

As with our merchandise guarantee, there are no conditions and no second-guessing. If you think something's wrong, then it is — and we'll fix it.

That said, the past few years have proven that shopping from our secure web server is not only safe, but one of the safest ways you can shop. Since lasergifts.com went online in 1999, there has not been one confirmed case of fraud.

How do I know if a Web site is secure?

In order to be accurate, we're going to get a bit detailed here. When buying something on the Internet, there are three things to be sure of:

• Data you send is strongly encrypted.
• The site you're doing business with is the site you think it is.
• The site you're doing business with processes your credit card and address information in a safe and responsible manner.

Points 1 and 2 are taken care of by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), the industry standard security protocol that lasergifts.com’s site uses to communicate with secure browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer. When communicating with a secure server like ours, these browsers encrypt the information you send in a way that is extremely difficult for anyone else to decode. (You don't have to know whether your browser supports secure transactions— if it doesn't, you won't be able to complete the checkout process.) We've included a visual representation below of what to look for in your browser window to see if you're viewing a site securely. Many security experts say the most important thing is what happens once the merchant receives your order. At lasergifts.com, we take several steps to keep things on our end as safe as possible. For example, we keep orders encrypted until we're ready to process them. We process orders several times each hour, so they don't "sit" anywhere very long.

Which parts of lasergifts.com's site are secure?

Most of the activity on our site involves the viewing of materials we've prepared and made accessible to everyone, so there's no need for these pages to be "secure". With a product page or an editorial page for example, no security risk exists because there is no "information" being exchanged. Anyone can access the same pages by pointing their browser to http://www.lasergifts.com. The portion of the lasergifts.com site we've made secure is, not surprisingly, the checkout area. This is where you actually purchase the items you've put into your Shopping Bag. The entire checkout process, from introduction to final confirmation, takes place in a secure environment. There are several ways to confirm that you're in a secure area. All SSL capable browsers have a symbol to indicate secure mode. Specifically:

Browser	Symbol Location	Normal (Insecure) mode Symbol	Secure Mode Symbol
Netscape 1.2, 2.0 and 3.0	Lower left	Broken Key	Complete Key
Netscape Communicator (4.0)	Lower left	Open Lock	Closed Lock
Microsoft Internet Explorer	Lower Right	NONE	Closed Lock

You can also tell when you're in a secure area because the URL to the left of the colon changes from 'http' to 'https' to signify that a SSL protocol is being used to communicate with the server. (http = HyperText Transport Protocol; https = HTTP with SSL.) In most browsers you'll also see a solid blue line in the upper portion of the browser's window — another visual aid that lets you know you're browsing a secure area. One additional note: some browsers give you a warning when you go from a secure area to a regular area. The aim is worthy enough— to ensure that people know when they've left a secure server. But in practice, the message is often a bit startling, and makes it look like you've done something wrong even though you really haven't.