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Whilst the Elmbridge Borough Council secure pages have been designed to be as secure as possible we would suggest that you follow the steps detailed below to help protect your information through your PC.
|The Get Safe Online website is a one-stop-shop for independent expert advice to help individuals and small businesses protect themselves against Internet threats such as viruses, spam, spyware and online fraud.
To use our secure services your browser must support 128-bit encryption strength. If your browser does not support this level of encryption technology, you will not be able to access our secure services or pay online.
The procedure for checking this setting varies according to the software you have installed but for most people, you can show the level of encryption supported by clicking 'Help' then 'About' on your Browser toolbar, then looking at the 'Cipher Strength' (if using Internet Explorer) or 'Version Support' (Netscape) values, if the value is not 128- bit then the secure services will not be available to you.
For your own security, please close your browser when you have finished using the EBC web site to prevent others from accessing your data from this computer after you have left, this is of course most important if you are not the sole user of the PC. They could do this by pressing the "Back" button to see pages that you viewed during your session that your browser has stored in its cache. If you close the browser at the end of the session, they will not be able to do this. Note that we have designed the secure sections of our web site so that your browser should not store pages in its cache, however it is always better to take extra precautions where your private data is concerned.
As detailed above the secure pages of our web site are designed so that your browser will not cache, or store any pages after you have viewed them. However, to be extra certain you can delete the cache from your browser at the end of your session. In the Internet Explorer browser, you can do this by selecting "Internet Options" from the "Tools" menu and then pressing the "Delete Files" button.
When you log in to the Secure pages of the Elmbridge Borough Council website, your session is encrypted using a technology called SSL. If you are using Internet Explorer, you can tell if a site is using SSL if a padlock appears on your browser at the bottom right of the screen. In Mozilla Firefox, the padlock appears in a similar location. However, you should verify that any secure site is genuine by viewing its certificate. In Internet Explorer and Firefox you can do this by double-clicking the padlock. If the site is genuinely a Elmbridge Borough Council site, you should see the words issued to www2.elmbridge.gov.uk in the certificates general tab. The certificate will have been issued by Equifax, who supply secure certificates to reputable organisations.