Why Secure Web Services?
The Purdue College of Engineering web sites encrypt all communications between your browser and our server to prevent potential Internet snoops from deciphering those transmissions. The default configuration for most web browsers notifies the user with a dialog box every time the page security mode changes. Because most pages you view from the Purdue College of Engineering web sites are sent over a secure connection, the frequent alerts may become very annoying.
To suppress such notifications, you may set the preferences/options in your browser. Look for a section that deals with security, and then find options for SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or alerts and turn off any that would show alerts when entering or leaving a secure page.
We serve pages securely because it assures visitors that any information they may supply for passwords, questionnaires or forms is transmitted in a confidential manner. In other words, you have the same degree of confidentiality as provided when supplying sensitive information like a credit card number or password to any reputable commerce site.
Secure serving also allows defined access areas to incorporate sensitive information, e.g. promotion documents or discussions of evolving policies, with assurance of confidentiality for browsing such content. A secure connection does not send or store any information that is not available over the more commonly used non-secure connections.