How safe is ordering on-line?
Ordering on-line can be one of the safest ways to use your credit card
- especially on forms like ours that use a secure server and a secure order form.
- Your credit card number is never exposed through discarded credit card receipts or carbons.
- Your credit card never leaves your possession, like it does in
restaurants, so you're in control of who has access to your credit card
number.
- The transmission can't be picked up by "baby monitors" and
scanners, as it can with cordless and cellular phone calls.
- When using our main order form, your credit card number and other billing information
is fully encrypted.
This means that even if someone were able to intercept the transmission (which is very unlikely) all they
would get is gibberish!
How common is credit card fraud on the Internet?
In the Washington Post's Fast Forward magazine (May 1996), a spokesmen for MasterCard International and AT&T's
Universal Card acknowledged that to date, they knew of no cases of Internet credit card fraud.
However, on May 23, 1997, the New York Times reported that "a computer cracker who broke into a San Diego
Internet service provider's computer and stole 100,000 credit card numbers has been nabbed. [He] was arrested
as he tried to peddle them to an undercover FBI agent for $260,000."
Statistically, it's much safer to use
your credit card on the web than to use it in a restaurant or department store. Even so, we still take every possible
precaution to protect the integrity of your credit card information.
What is a "secure" transaction on the Internet?
Most Internet site hosts (computers and their software) offer an additional level of security for information entered by a
visitor to their pages. Normally, web pages that do not ask you to fill in information about yourself have no need to
be specially secured. Only pages that transmit information that you supply, like our order form, take advantage of
such security. To test a site's added security, you will need to first link to a page containing such a form.
Described below are the ways that you can tell if a form is specially secured, depending on the browser software that
you are using. If a page does not contain added security, it simply means that you are either using a browser which does
not support this additional level of security transactions or you are on a page which is not using a specially secured
server.
Once you have finished selecting products and adding them to your Shopping Cart,
and you press the Checkout button, we switch to Secure Mode
in order to collect the billing and shipping information in total security.
How can I tell if my transmission has added security?
- Microsoft Internet Explorer: Look at the bottom of Explorer's window.
In either the lower left or lower right hand corner,
you will see a small pad lock.
If the lock is "locked" (not open), your transmissions are specially encrypted and secured.
- Netscape Navigator: Look at the bottom left hand corner.
You will see a little key. If the key is solid and sitting on a blue background, your
transmissions are encrypted and secure. If you're key is broken, your data is not sent via extra security.
- Other Browsers:
Each browser has unique ways of indicating if you are running in secure mode.
Whatever browser you are using, if the URL you are visiting commences with "https://",
you are contacting a secure server. If you see "http://", your transaction is not encrypted.
If I am still worried, are there alternate ways of ordering?
Yes. You can pay by check or money order, sent by standard ("snail") mail.
Full information on this is available
here.
How do you process my credit card information?
Our credit card processing system is completely automated,
so no employees at Fog City Records ever see a credit card number that is used to buy
items from us over the Internet. That transaction is handled by a fulfillment specialist.
If you have any further questions
about your order,
their excellent customer service department
can be reached via email at
support@fastatmosphere.com.
Do you provide my personal information to other parties?
We do not sell or rent our list of customers to anyone.
If you do wish to be notified in the future when we have new releases or other special
events, join the Fog City mailing list.