Domain Name Registrar Go Daddy Awarded WebTrust Seal of Assurance for 4th Straight Year

August 30, 2007; 01:51 AM
To protect yourself from identity theft and other computer-related risks, it’s important to ensure your privacy is protected when you shop, pay bills or give out personal information for any reason online. For the fourth consecutive year, GoDaddy.com is among a select group of companies awarded the WebTrust Seal of Assurance for their Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates. Go Daddy SSL Certificates can be placed on Web sites to ensure your transactions are safer.

“We want consumers to know their personal data and business transactions online are secure,” said Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. “That’s why we offer a variety of superior SSL Certificates that can be placed on Web sites to provide for the encryption of sensitive data and give those Web sites additional credibility. These certificates are for more than just e-commerce. They can also help protect your personal information."

Go Daddy SSL Certificates can be used to protect private material that’s exchanged through online communities, account creation, signing up for newsletter mailings or anywhere else personal data is given -- even information as simple as a name or email address.

Go Daddy’s processes for making sure the certificates are properly issued are also top-quality, as validated by WebTrust. The WebTrust Seal of Assurance is awarded by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. These groups confirm Go Daddy’s authentication and security processes for the sale of SSL Certificates. For the fourth year in a row, they awarded the WebTrust Seal after finding that Go Daddy’s Certification Authority meets and exceeds standards for privacy, security, business practices, transaction integrity and confidentiality.

All of Go Daddy’s Web server certificates enable up to 256-bit encryption, the highest level of encryption on the market today. Go Daddy has offered SSL Certificates for several years, with the company now ranking as one of the world's most popular for this type of product. Late last year, Go Daddy also began selling Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates with an even higher standard for secure online businesses to boost consumer confidence.

Web sites with SSL Certificates show a padlock icon and the prefix “https” before the domain name in the address bar of your Internet browser. EV SSL Certificates have those features, plus computer users see a green background and the name of the organization that owns the EV SSL Certificate in the address bar when using Internet Explorer 7. Mozilla’s upcoming Firefox 3.0 is expected to have a similar indicator. Go Daddy and 24 other top Internet companies worked together to create the set of strict guidelines required for a company to obtain an EV SSL Certificate.

“Go Daddy’s work in helping to create EV SSL Certificate guidelines and repeated recognition with the WebTrust Seal of Assurance show how serious we are about heightening security for online transactions,” said Parsons. “People want to know right away they are on a legitimate, secure Web site before they exchange information and we want them to have that peace of mind.”

Go Daddy consistently ranks as one of the top three providers of SSL Certificates. The company is also the world’s largest domain name registrar with more than 23 million names under management and more than 4 million customers worldwide.