"Whenever you're sending sensitive information online—say, your credit card number to Amazon or a message over Gmail—the content is encrypted before being sent

"Whenever you're sending sensitive information online—say, your credit card number to Amazon or a message over Gmail—the content is encrypted before being sent and then decrypted by the Web site you sent it to. (Sites using this secure mode have URLs that start with "https," and browsers add a padlock icon as well to demonstrate you're communicating securely.) Every vendor has its own rules for how to scramble information so that only it, the intended recipient, can decode it." SSL does not encrypt content and vendors don't all ahve their own rules about how SSL works. It's a standard. I really wish that journalists covering technical matters would do enough research to explain things properly.