Secure Transactions

Sending e-mail is rather like sending a postcard that is xeroxed at every stop on the way to its destination. It is insecure. Although unlikely to be significantly more dangerous than trusting your credit card number to waiters, tradespeople, etc. there is certainly a potential for abuse.

Encryption systems exist that render the transmission of credit card information quite secure. Netscape's secure sockets layer offers such a system. We have chosen PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), however, for the following reasons:

It is far more secure than Netscape's secure pages.
It is globally available.
It is free to the consumer for private use.
Its general use in commerce will aid in combatting tyranny, censorship, and thought control in repressive regimes.

On the downside, PGP is unfortunately not handled automatically by your browser and must therefor be handled by you on your machine.

PGP is discussed in and may be acquired from The International PGP Site (for users outside the US) and from the MIT PGP Site for US users.

You will need The ABACUS PGP public key to send encrypted mail to us. or one of the following keys for individual galleries:
(keys to come)

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Last Modified May 5, 1996