General Question

tinyfaery's avatar

Windows help for a Mac user...

Asked by tinyfaery (44208points) July 16th, 2008

How do I know If the web-site I am on is secure? My Mac shows me a little lock in the upper right hand corner, but I see no equivalent on my pc at work. I think we run the windows program that came before vista, and we use explorer. Please help.

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10 Answers

XCNuse's avatar

Are you using firefox? If so, a third of the address bar will be in green. If you’re using IE then you’re screwed anyway, I don’t know what IE does when you’re on a secure website.

robmandu's avatar

For IE7, look for the lock icon to the right of the url.

Lightlyseared's avatar

ie6 shows a padlock in the bottom of the window next to the status bar

tinyfaery's avatar

I have no idea what edition of IE I have. This computer is old and slow. Is there a way to find out? So far, I can’t find a lock icon anywhere.

robmandu's avatar

You hafta go to a site with an https : // url.

Try going to http://eBay.com and click on the Sign In button (even if you don’t have an eBay account.) The resulting page is “secure” and you should see a lock somewhere (up near the url in IE7 or down in the status bar in IE6.)

Fluther is not a secure site, does not employ https, and hence no lock visible.

Lightlyseared's avatar

if the computer is old and slow and you don’t know the version it’s a safe bet the browser is not patched and upto date and therefore you might want to avoid doing anything that requires a secure connection.

tinyfaery's avatar

I tried ebay; still no lock. I think lightlyseared is right. I don’t dare update though, who knows what will happen. This also scares me because we send confidential files via this computer, with private and vital information. Yikes! Gotta love social services!

Thanks all.
Boo for me!

XCNuse's avatar

Just get firefox lol
screw IE

8lightminutesaway's avatar

I second that, IE is not good, firefox is. you won’t have much to worry about then.

Truefire's avatar

If you have allot of important files on the computer, and you ( whom I take it is the guy in charge, and no one else has a clue about PC’s) should hire some kid to secure it, or install Linux on it. Windows CANNOT be secure in the hands of clueless people.

No offense- most people just don’t get computers.

Go to http://www.easygeek.org for more help.

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