internet, is the potential for identity theft. Although it is a typical belief that larger companies and enterprises are the usual focus of identity thefts, rather than individuals, recent reports seem to show a trend opposing this belief. Specifically, it was found in a 2007 "Internet Security Threat Report" that roughly ninety-three percent of "gateway" attacks were targeted at unprepared home users. The term "gateway attack" was used to refer to an attack which aimed not at stealing data immediately, but rather at gaining access for future attacks. According to Symantec's "Internet Security Threat Report", this continues despite the increasing emphasis on internet security due to the expanding "underground economy". With more than fifty percent of the supporting servers located in the United States, this underground economy has become a haven for internet thieves, who use the system in order to sell stolen information. These pieces of information can range from generic things such as a user account or email to something as personal as a bank account number and PIN. While the processes these internet thieves use are abundant and unique, one popular trap unsuspecting people fall into is that of online purchasing. This is not to allude to the idea that every purchase one makes online will leave them susceptible to identity theft, but rather that it increases the chances. In fact, in a 2001 article titled "Consumer Watch", the popular online site PC World went as far as calling secure e-shopping a myth. Though unlike the gateway attacks mentioned above, these incidents of information being stolen through online purchases generally are more prevalent in medium to large e-commerce sites, rather than smaller individualized sites. This is assumed to be a result of the larger consumer population and purchases, which allow for more potential leeway with information. Ultimately, however, the potential for a violation of one's privacy is typically out of their hands after purchasing from an online "e-tailer" or store. One of the most common forms in which hackers receive private information from online e-tailers actually comes from an attack placed upon the site's servers responsible for maintaining information about previous transactions. For as experts explain, these e-tailers are not doing nearly enough to maintain or improve their security measures. Even those sites that clearly present a privacy or security policy can be subject to hackers’ havoc as most policies only rely upon encryption technology which only