Friday, April 27, 2007

Improved Shopping Security

We have finalized security improvements to make our site more compatible with Internet Explorer 7+ .

Despite the extreme difficulty and cost to implement we now, use the most secure encryption available for when logged in to your account or checking out. VeriSign SSL High Grade 256 Bit Encryption with Extended Validation.

You can also use encryption during casual browsing if you add an "s" to the "http" ie. https://www.AlerG.com/safeshopping.html
This may slow normal browsing down a bit since everything sent/received has to be encrypted.

Verisign required considerable "verification" from us to make the upgrades. This in my opinion was annoying but a good thing since it makes the upgrade more secure.

Why Verisign SGC: Strongest Encryption for the Most Visitors
Companies, governments and public institutions worldwide trust VeriSign to secure their sites and protect their brands.

  • SGC-enabled SSL Certificates provide 128- or 256-bit encryption to over 99.9% of Web site visitors, including the tens of millions who use certain older versions of Windows and Internet Explorer. AlerG uses 256-bit - more secure. ... And pricey for us. ;-)
  • VeriSign secures more than 500,000 Web servers worldwide, more than any other Certificate Authority.
  • The world’s 40 largest banks and 93% of Fortune 500 companies choose VeriSign SSL Certificates.
Note: we have found that a small number of IE 7 users may get an error message when switching to secure mode. This is due to incorrect or unfinished IE setup, not upgrading to the latest IE version or some other issue. Do not worry, just click on the PADLOCK symbol and verify that you are on www.alerg.com. As long as the PADLOCK symbol appears somewhere in your browser and/or you have https showing you are encrypted.

Currently this message only sometimes appears on IE7, older versions of IE, Firefox, Netscape, and Opera do not appear to have the issue.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Monthly Newsletter Out Soon

My monthly newsletter is going out soon. If you want to receive it please sign up on our website. The Topic for April will be "Choosing the Right Air Purifier for Your Allergies".

The levels of pollen and smog is in the air is skyrocketing and I am hearing through my staff (and random monitoring of customer e-mails) that a simple explanation of how to help spring/summer allergies or chemical sensitivities via the newsletter might be helpful. There are so many options it can be overwhelming. My suggestions are from years of personal testing and research. I will be covering home, office and car/commuting air purification.

I will also be covering the basics of a "safe room" and a few other related topics.

If you have signed up in the past or are unsure, just sign up again. Duplicates are automatically removed. Please be sure to add the appropriate e-mail to your spam filter if you have one. If we have been tagged as spam accidentally or automatically in the past you will have been removed from the list.

You can sign up here www.alerg.com/newsletters/