|
How to get an ssl certificate ... the wrong way
There are two principal ways of getting an SSL certificate: you can either buy one from a certificate vendor or you can "self-sign" your own certificate. That is, using any number of different tools (both open source and proprietary) you can actually sign your own SSL certificate and save the time and expense of going through a certificate vendor.
Technically speaking, the data may be encrypted, but there still is a fundamental problem with self-signing that defeats part of the purpose of having an SSL certificate in the first place. Self-signing a certificate is like issuing yourself a driver's license. Roads are safer because governments issue licenses. Making sure those roads are safe is the role of the certificate authorities. Certificate authorities make sure the site is legitimate.
Self-Signed certificates will trigger a warning window in most browser configurations that will indicate that the certificate was not recognized. VeriSign admits that there are a lot of people that will click through anyway just like there are a lot of people that will click through an expired SSL certificate as well.
A site that conveys trust is also more likely to be a site that makes (more) money. There is research that suggests that having a recognizable SSL certificate may, in fact, have a direct correlation to increased e-commerce sales. VeriSign, in particular, has done some research that shows that users who visit sites that have a recognizable trust mark (like the VeriSign Secure Site seal) are more comfortable shopping on those sites and have fewer abandoned shopping carts and better repeat purchases.
|
