[thelist] SSL Question

[Hershel Robinson]

> I think people would more respect you being transparent (just tell
> them in small letters under the link that they will be redirected to
> a secure site)
> as opposed to trying to hide the partner site via a frameset...

and:

> Don't mask anything if you want to look serious and secure...

and:

> Not a great idea to hide something if it's legitimate.  Just let the
> user know what's happening, either before they click the
> link, or on the
> donations page.

Do you really think that the average user is aware that the URL is being
masked? I have a client with a large site and one of their employees works
on updating the site via an admin side which allows some HTML input and thus
she knows a bit about HTML. She told me the other day that something
happened and she couldn't get at the source code via her browser of the home
page--it was being hidden from her.

I happened to be at their office and so I looked at her machine. She was at
the .com version of the site which is just a frameset which points to the
.org site which has the real content. Her view source was showing the
frameset and she thought it was a trick of some sort to hide the HTML.

My point is that this person knows more about internet technology (I think)
than the average layman and she wasn't even aware that the actual URL was
being masked.

It could well be that I am wrong, but I don't think that the average layman
knows the least about such techniques. Anyone have evidence otherwise?

Thanks,
Hershel