Collecting personally identifiable information such as SSN, DOB, address, etc. from your customers and prospects online has it own group of challenges and considerations. The final thing you as a new or used car dealer needs is to have certainly one of your customers fall victim to recognize theft from filling out your credit app. Not just are you experiencing a moral https://Ssndob24.com obligation to safeguard these details in many cases you might also need legal obligations you have to consider.

First, I want to claim that I'm not advocating the abolition of online credit applications, as a matter of fact Personally i think taking credit apps online could make selling cars faster and easier. Many dealers have a secure credit app on the website, or at the very least that's what they certainly were "sold" by their site solutions provider. In fact several services provide you with nothing more than a shared credit application that's not located within your website. The reasons with this are many, first of all it is higher priced to have your own personal SSL site certificate and if you new to the procedure can be a real pain in the butt to setup on your webserver.

As an example if your website is StevenSellsUsedCars.com many providers go the'cheap way'and provide access with their secure app which can be something like [https://www.ISellWebsites.com/creditapp.php?dealer=steven]. While that is technically a'secure app'from the front-end (we will cover back-end later), the perception to the customers is that they have left *your* site and gone somewhere else. This leaves the client wondering "Why am I not at StevenSellsUsedCars.com anymore? Who's this ISellWebsites.com guy? Can I trust them? Did this website get hi-jacked? Is my information safe?" In a period where ID theft may be the hot topic on all the area evening news stations, folks are scared about offering their personally identifiable information to sources they cannot trust. This bit of doubt you've put in this perspective customer's mind may have cost you a sale, while he went back to Google and found your competitor's website that had a more secure application.

Now that individuals have covered the front-end now lets look at how the data is stored and retrieved in the back-end. You'd not believe the amount of dealerships I have now been to and had the dealer show me his email inbox. They're filled up with credit apps email for them in non-encrypted'plain-text '; willing to be stolen by a hacker as well as just an everyday bystander. Consider it for a moment and it doesn't take being a very skilled uber-hacker to comprehend the implications. In the event that you will encrypt the data from the consumer when he fills out the application form, shouldn't you keep it encrypted through the entire entire process? Who in their right mind would believe it is logical to send these details in plain text in an email? Sadly most website solution providers available on the market today do exactly this.