Excellent FireFox Security Extension

SSL Personas is a wonderful "In your face" security add-on. It makes it very obvious whether you are at a secure site or not. I like this bold approach because it wakes me up. It is too hard to check the little https: in the location bar or the tiny little padlock that is somewhere.

Extended Security

The Firefox header turns green for a secure website with a verified certificate authority. It shows a big green check and a gold seal certificate and a padlock. This means they went through an extensive validation process.

All the guessing is removed.

Regular Security

If the site has normal security where they have a valid certificate but haven't gone through extended authentication, then the header turns blue. Extended authentication costs more, so this may mean they just don't feel they need to pay the extra money. The connection to this site is secure.

This shows a certificate and a padlock and turns blue.

Part Insecure, Part Secure

An Orange Firefox header with an exclamation mark indicates partially secure. This normally means that some insecure content is being presented along with secure content. Do not give your credit card or other secure identity information on a page like this.

Not Secure

The Firefox header does not change for regular insecure sites.