You click to check out at an online merchant. Suddenly your browser address bar says HTTPS instead of HTTP. What's going on? Is your credit card information safe?

Good news. Your information is safe. The website you are working with has made sure that no one can steal your information.

Instead of HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), this website uses HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).

Using HTTPS, the computers agree on a "code" between them, and then they scramble the messages using that "code" so that no one in between can read them. This keeps your information safe from hackers.

They use the "code" on a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), sometimes called Transport Layer Security (TLS) to send the information back and forth.