Security

1. To ensure that your transaction is secure, we use sophisticated encryption and authentication technologies, if supported by your computer. Our Digital ID from Equifax®, Inc. allows your browser to verify our Internet identity when you visit our site and ensures that the information you send to our Internet address is delivered only to us. In addition, our Digital ID enables us to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption capabilities, securing transmissions between your browser and our server in the unlikely case that a third party was to intercept them.

Recent versions of most Internet browsers support the encrypted transmission of online documents and the data you enter. This means that instead of sending readable text, both your browser and the website's secure server encode all text using a security key. That way personal data sent to your browser or data you send back would be extremely difficult to decode in the unlikely event it was intercepted by an unauthorized party. The key used for encoding is a random number that is unique to your session on the secure website. There are two grades of Internet security: International-grade encryption uses a 40-bit random number negotiated between your browser and the web server. This means that only one out of about 1,000,000,000,000 possible decoding keys can be used to decipher your data. We use 128-bit key domestic-grade encryption. This produces a vastly larger number of keys, decreasing the likelihood someone could decipher the correct key code. This site uses the domestic-grade encryption.

1. Your Internet session is encrypted if your security-enabled browser connected to a Web site is using the Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol. URL strings beginning with "https://" instead of "http://" indicate that the secure protocol is in effect. Your browser may also tell you if security is operating. For example, Microsoft Internet Explorer shows an lock icon when in secure mode or if 128-bit security is in effect. Note that security may be operating without any visible indication if the page you are viewing employs frames (see below).If secure transmission is not in effect or only part of a frame-based page is secure, Explorer does not show the lock icon. Most browsers can be set to give you a pop-up announcement when you visit or leave a secure Web page. The Explorer setting is on the "Advanced" tab when you select "Options" on the View menu. Secure mode and frame-based pages security may be operating without displaying any security icons if only part of a frame-based page is secure. You can verify the security of a page within a frame by opening it in a new browser window. Explorer allows you to open a link in a new window by right-clicking on the link and selecting that option from the pop-up menu. When a secure page is open in its own window, instead of being viewed within a frame, you can then see the security icons provided by your browser as well as the "https://" secure protocol prefix in the URL string. We restrict access to specific information about you to only those associates who verify insurance.