signing your own ssl certificate

[ilustrate]

i enabled ssl on a site that i will commence e-commerce sales shortly and wanted to ask a quick question. do i really need to purchase an ssl certificate? i will be running paypal as the payment gateway and i assume paypals network is highly secure. i feel that their is a need for ssl during the initial customer information capture but wanted to know if i could just sign the certificate myself since it would just tecnically just be encrypting a couple pages at most. maybe a my account section but i assume everything else would be handled by paypal. is this correct? can i just sign the certificate some way and get the box to dissapear?

 

[jamesyeeoc]

do i really need to purchase an ssl certificate?

You don't *have* to.... But to give a better 'appearance' to your business, you probably should. Afterall, if you are running a commerce site for profit, the cost of a cert is really not that much.

i will be running paypal as the payment gateway and i assume paypals network is highly secure.

Highly secure.. hmmm, should I even go there? My opinion is that the only site which would be absolutely 100% secure is the one which is non-existent. Any lock or barrier can be broken given enough time, ingenuity, and resources. Can PayPal legitimately claim that they have *never* been hacked into, ever? With a clear conscience and with the wrath of God to answer to if they lie? LOL

can i just sign the certificate some way and get the box to dissapear?

You can self-sign, but that will not prevent a warning box from appearing on the browser. Self-signed certificates are perfectly legitimate for the encryption, but getting the average user to believe that it is really 'safe' is another thing. With all the publicity about safe-surfing, I have found many users to be a lot more cautious than in years past. Now if they would only take the same care in opening emails and clicking on bogus Paypal, Citibank, and other links...

 

[poke]

Yeah, I report "spoofs" to abuse@paypal almost on a daily basis