Leading Canadian Companies Help Shield Consumers from Online Fraud with VeriSign Extended Validation SSL

Brother Canada, HMV.ca and Travelocity.ca Offer Customers an Added Layer of Protection Online

By Derek Iwasiuk
DomainInformer.com
October 29, 2007

Mountain View, CA -- To help keep Canadian consumers from falling prey to identity thieves and online fraud artists, Brother Canada, HMV and Travelocity.ca are providing their customers with an extra layer of protection thanks to VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the leading provider of digital infrastructure for the networked world.

The three Canadian companies have joined thousands of other businesses in deploying VeriSign Extended Validation (EV) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates. By protecting their sites with VeriSign EV SSL Certificates, the companies are able to provide visitors to their sites that use high-security browsers with immediate, visual confirmation that they are genuinely in communication with the online business they expected to be.

EV SSL protection from VeriSign helps companies safeguard their customers from impostor Web sites created by e-criminals in order to steal Social Insurance Numbers, bank account details, or other sensitive personal data. In its Canadian Consumer Handbook 2007, Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs cites “Know Who You Are Dealing With” as the No. 1 tip for ensuring safe transactions over the Internet. VeriSign EV SSL Certificates makes it easier for consumers to follow that advice.

“It is increasingly essential for our many millions of customers to be assured that the information they submit to us online is going to the HMV Web site– and no one else,” said Dave Marien, V.P. of Information Technology at HMV. “VeriSign EV SSL Certificates enable us to offer that assurance in a way that is both instant and transparent for our customers. This is a vital part of our strategy to offer all HMV shoppers the fullest protection whenever they make purchases from us online.”

“We’re constantly looking for ways to increase customer confidence in our service,” states Luc E. Godard, Senior Corporate Director, Marketing, at Brother Canada. “VeriSign gives us an easily identifiable way for our customers to know their transactions are secure, and that they’re on the actual Brother Canada site.”

When a Web site uses an EV SSL Certificate to identify itself, some browsers display easily understood visual cues to provide tangible assurance of a site’s authenticity. The address bar turns green, a lock icon appears next to the address, and a new field displays to the right of the URL in the browser. This field contains the name of the organization that owns the site as well as the security provider that issued the certificate, such as VeriSign.

“Now more than ever, consumers the world over must be able to trust the sites they visit and the businesses with whom they share sensitive personal data,” said Tim Callan, director of SSL product marketing at VeriSign. “VeriSign EV SSL Certificates help visionary leaders like Brother Canada, HMV and Travelocity.ca maintain that trust every hour of every day. Although these three companies represent very different marketplaces, they all are taking steps to see that Canada’s consumers are protected from the threat of identity theft online.”

As the most respected and trusted SSL authority on the Web, VeriSign is the EV SSL Certificate provider of choice for more than 1,500 Internet domains, representing greater than 75 percent of the entire EV SSL Certificate market worldwide. In fact, over 93 percent of the Fortune 500 – and the world’s 40 largest banks – rely on some form of VeriSign SSL Certificate authentication.

About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), operates digital infrastructure services that enable and protect billions of interactions every day across the world’s voice, video and data networks. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.