Archive for the ‘Internet Security’ Category

I got an ad from my Web site host­ing ser­vice recently offer­ing to sell me an add-on pack­age that they claimed would improve the secu­rity of my Web site and would pro­tect my vis­i­tors’ per­sonal data. I turned them down. Here’s why.

Did you notice that nowhere on this site do we ask you to reg­is­ter, or log in, or use a pass­word? Nowhere do we ask you for any per­sonal infor­ma­tion. When you click on one of our ads, the online retail­ers will ask you for per­sonal data (kinda makes it hard to sell you some­thing and ship it to you with­out the per­sonal data), but you aren’t on this Web site at that point — you’re on the retailer’s site.

Shop­ping here is totally anony­mous. There is noth­ing built into this site to enable me to know who any of my vis­i­tors are, hence no need for “secu­rity soft­ware.” There’s noth­ing here to pro­tect. The only thing that gets tracked here is which page on this site did each sale orig­i­nate from. That enables me to accu­rately track how much com­mis­sion goes to each of the char­i­ties that has a shop­ping page on this site.

I’ve made the point before that I am not a “mid­dle­man” in your trans­ac­tions with our online retail part­ners — not in any way, shape, or form. I don’t mark-up the prices of the goods and ser­vices you buy from our online retail­ers. (In fact, you are more than wel­come to use any coupon codes or spe­cial offers to get the absolute best price you can from any of our retail­ers.) I’m not involved in tak­ing your orders, main­tain­ing inven­tory, ship­ping your mer­chan­dise, or any other aspect of the sales process. My job is merely to intro­duce shop­pers to sell­ers, and then politely step out of the pic­ture and let you do busi­ness with each other.

And when you do, the retail­ers send me a com­mis­sion, which I split 50–50 with the char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion from whose page you started your shop­ping adventure.

It’s a thing of sim­ple beauty and is part of the rea­son that we are able to give such a high rebate per­cent­age to each of our part­ner charities.

So shop here with con­fi­dence, and in the immor­tal words of chef Julia Child, “Don’t be afraid!”