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actinic payments - anybody know anything of them?

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Doc_N
Doc_N Posts: 8,300 Forumite
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in Shop but don't drop
Wife tried to buy some stuff last night from vertigarden.com but the only payment method they use is something called actinic. My card company have never heard of them, and even the name sounds iffy!

They may well be perfectly reputable, but the ordering process doesn't even seem to go through a secure page, and there's no way I'm handing over credit card details in a situation like this.

Anybody know anything of them?

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  • Magnolia
    Magnolia Posts: 1,273 Forumite
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    They appear to be an E commerce shopping cart software company:

    http://www.actinic.co.uk/index.shtml
    Mags - who loves shopping
  • Doc_N
    Doc_N Posts: 8,300 Forumite
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    Magnolia wrote: »
    They appear to be an E commerce shopping cart software company:

    http://www.actinic.co.uk/index.shtml

    Thanks - they are indeed, and I did phone them, but nobody's there at the weekend.

    My main concern is, though, that when you click through the payment pages you don't seem to be going through to a secure (https) page. My credit card company hadn't heard of them (and neither had I until I Googled them) and advised me not to use them!
  • sweetstudent
    sweetstudent Posts: 670 Forumite
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    I have checked also and it does not uses a HTTPS, therfore i would advoid them like the plague, any company that does not use a secure payment site will not deserve my money!
    :beer:In My 'Permanant' Pre-Masters Gap Year :beer:
    'Married' Apple Fan and Proud     With 16 Conversions
    I am not affiliated with any company except the one for whom I work!
  • Doc_N
    Doc_N Posts: 8,300 Forumite
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    sweetstudent wrote: »
    I have checked also and it does not uses a HTTPS, therfore i would advoid them like the plague, any company that does not use a secure payment site will not deserve my money!

    Thanks for checking. It's very rare to find a payment service not using secure pages, but actinic does seem to be - I'll give it a miss.
  • EOC
    EOC Posts: 1 Newbie
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    This is from a press release

    Actinic, the UK expert in ecommerce for small and medium businesses, today announces the release of a new card payment system, Actinic Payments, for Actinic ecommerce stores.

    The service is powered by the Creditcall payment infrastructure, arguably the most robust and reliable in the industry, with 100% up time since 2005. Actinic Payments enables small and medium businesses to meet the latest banking security standards at a very reasonable cost. It offers full Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Level 1 certification, across the board 3D-Secure compatibility and integration with all major banks. Actinic Payments comes in a highly competitive range of price bands designed to suit different business sizes with differing order volumes.

    Used with Actinic's award-winning ecommerce products, Actinic Payments provides high levels of efficiency for the merchant, with most common payment functions accessible directly from the order-processing application. These include pre-authorisations, refunds, voids and additional payments -- all achieved without storing any payment card details in-house. The system also offers payment processing for mail order / telephone order (MOTO), providing a complete multi-channel payment processing system. Appropriate merchant accounts are required.

    Creditcall offer very high security.
  • StumpyPumpy
    StumpyPumpy Posts: 1,458 Forumite
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    edited 8 October 2010 at 9:05PM
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    Ok, old news but in case someone else is like me and doesn't read the date of the original post - don't use vertigarden.com use http://www.vertigarden.co.uk

    SP
    Come on people, it's not difficult: lose means to be unable to find, loose means not being fixed in place. So if you have a hole in your pocket you might lose your loose change.
  • Doc_N
    Doc_N Posts: 8,300 Forumite
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    StumpyPumpy wrote: »
    Ok, old news but in case someone else is like me and doesn't read the date of the original post - don't use vertigarden.com use http://www.vertigarden.co.uk

    SP

    Makes no difference. Both registered to VertiGarden Ltd.
  • StumpyPumpy
    StumpyPumpy Posts: 1,458 Forumite
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    The reason I suggested using the .co.uk site is that the .com site isn't secure. I agree with you: they are both registered to VertiGarden and indeed, the .com version is a simple shell (techincally a frameset hosting an iframe pointing to the .co.uk site) But from a security point of view, this is a big no no. While the content of the iframe is an https source and therefore its form data is transmitted encrypted, the whole page is not which leaves it vunerable to several data acquisition attacks including cross site scripting, man-in-the-middle spoofing and others that I won't mention because it might only encourage people to try them.
    Is that likely to be happening on this site? No. Is it possible? Definitely. So why use that site where the only additional features are the security holes, when you can buy your stuff through the .co.uk site without exposing yourself to these vunerabilities?

    SP
    Come on people, it's not difficult: lose means to be unable to find, loose means not being fixed in place. So if you have a hole in your pocket you might lose your loose change.
  • cbarling
    cbarling Posts: 1 Newbie
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    Hi, I'm the CEO and co-founder of Actinic.

    If you use the .co.uk site of Vertigarden, as stated, you don't get a problem with the missing https. Indeed, the Actinic Payments site displays a green bar in modern browsers, indicating the highest quality and most rigorously checked security certificate.

    The reason why the payments side previously did not use https with the .com version of the site is because I believe that previously the site was running within an iFrame. We wouldn't recommend to our customers that they run things that way. In fact, even under those circumstances the payment site is secure, and if you looked at the source code you would see that was the case. I'm using the past tense because the .com site now seems to simply redirect to the .co.uk site, so the problem is no more.

    Anyway, don't take my word for it. For a discussion of exactly the same issue, but in relation to a large well known bank, search for "Chase Bank No Encryption" in Google and take the first result. (I can't post a link as I'm new to the forum).

    For a bit of background on all of this, Actinic powers around 12,000 ecommerce sites in the UK, and we've been around since 1996. We've always taken security very seriously. Our original software, released in 1997, fully encrypted orders and was ultra secure for its time. That was before most people even knew there was any sort of security issue on the Internet.

    So I hope that this has put to bed any suggestion that there is something wrong with the security of Actinic.

    Chris
  • clivvy
    clivvy Posts: 1 Newbie
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    I just this minute went through a transaction and the (UK) site check-out sent me to the .com site, which is not https and does not display the green bar, so the details above are not quite right yet. I did not make the purchase but have e-mailed the site to say why.
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