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Everybody who opens an E-commerce store should be concerned about their web site security. E-commerce usually involves the processing of credit cards and sensitive customer information so security is very important. There has been an increase as well in stolen credit card numbers being used to buy merchandise. You as the store owner are responsible for screening these credit card numbers because it is your loss for both the amount charged and the merchandise that you ship for a fraudulent transaction. Here are some precautions you can take to greatly reduce your risk:

1. Use a SSL Secure Socket Layer encryption on your web site to encrypt sensitive customer data. Pages that are encrypted with SSL layers will show a "padlock" at the bottom right of the web browser if you are using Internet Explorer.

2. Do not store customer's credit card information on the server. Process transactions immediately through your payment gateway (such as Authorize.net or Verisign) and have them be responsible for the credit card security. You may also store half of the customer's credit card number on the server and have half of the number emailed to you if you wish to manually process the order.

3. Collect the Card Verification Value of the credit card (3 digit number located on the back of the card) for further card verification.

4. Use your credit card processor's Address Verification System to verify the correct billing address (street and zip) of the credit card. If the address does not match it may be best to cancel the order. Using this method along with #5 will prevent 99% of your fraudulent orders.

5. Do not ship to an address other than the billing address of the credit card.

6. You may wish to collect the issuing bank name and issuing bank phone # of the credit card. If the transaction looks suspicious you can call the bank to make sure it is not a stolen credit card.

"7. Use common sense, if the order looks suspicious do not process it, or wait until the next day. Often if the card is stolen the card will be reported as stolen the next day and you will avoid the fraudulent transaction.

8. For foreign country orders you may want to only take money orders or cashiers checks. Foreign banks sometimes to not have address verification systems and the transactions are riskier.