Hi,

we are looking for the first encryption of a Buy Now button on the
Internet ? similar to the encrypted Buy Now buttons provided by
PayPal.

At this stage the earliest date we have found is February 13, 2004,
when PayPal announced the encryption of its Buy Now buttons at:

http://www.paypaldev.org/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4980

We want to know of any buy now buttons which were encrypted before
this date, and how they were encrypted.

The date and functionality of such a button is crucial. 

The encryption must be used to prevent a customer from tampering with
the pricing information which is contained in the buy now button code.

For example a Buy Now button included in a shop, which uses a
database, does not really contain any pricing information which could
be tampered with by a customer. Such a database Buy Now button usually
contains an ID number and the pricing information is stored server
side and can therefore not be manipulated.

If such a button were encrypted, it would be of no interest, as the
encryption would not have been used to protect the pricing information
from being manipulated but rather for example to obfuscate some source
code of a website.

We are looking for a button which contains pricing information as part
of the button code and which has been encrypted or signed to protect
this pricing information, so that a customer can not alter the pricing
information before making a purchase.

In effect we are looking for the earliest button which worked like a
PayPal Buy Now button and which was encrypted (and this may well have
been the PayPal button)

It is thinkable for example that a PayPal developer offered an
encryption function for PayPal buttons as an add-on service for PayPal
before February 2004.

Or a PayPal competitor used an encrypted button system comparable to
the PayPal button system before February 2004.

Or may be PayPal actually launched their encrypted buttons on their
website on February 1, but only announced them on February 13.

Or may be they publicly discussed the functionality of these buttons
or officially announced them before February 13, 2004.

To answer this question you must supply us with:

Any documentary evidence which shows when the first encrypted buy now
button was publicly USED or ANNOUNCED on the Internet.

If you can not find any encrypted PayPal like buy now buttons before
February 13, then we need to know how you came to this conclusion ?
i.e. we would need evidence which shows the extensiveness of your
research which lead you to this conclusion.

---

Clarification of Question by sgk1-ga on 22 Mar 2006 19:09 PST

There appears to be a system called Paylockgenerator which may have
been encrypting paypal buttons as early as 2002 and would need
investigation to see how it worked back then.

---

Clarification of Question by sgk1-ga on 22 Mar 2006 20:17 PST

Paylockgenerator can be ignored. 

It simply writes the buy now button in Javascript and obfuscated the
code. The pay now button does not contain any encrypted code or
signature which gets verified serverside to ensure the content of the
button is accurate - it merely writes the button in a different
language - i.e. Javascript.

An important part of a properly encrypted or signed buy now button is
that  the button code contains encrypted or signed information which
must be verified by a server to ensure that the button content has not
been tampered with.

i.e. in the case of the PayPal buttons the button code contains
encrypted information which has to be verified or decrypted by the
PayPal server to ensure that no tampering took place.

---

Clarification of Question by sgk1-ga on 22 Mar 2006 20:21 PST

The most likely scenario appears to be that either PayPal used or
announced its encrypted buttons publicly before February 13, 2004 or
that a competitor of PayPal or an e-commerce solution was using
encrypted or signed buttons rather than a serverside data-base.
:)

---

Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 06 Apr 2006 20:09 PDT

The meaning of the expression 
  "encrypted button"  is not clear.

 There is protocol which PayPal pioneered which can verify the purchase
and the payment of a specifies price, which uses SSL and SSL uses encryption. 
Later PayPal  introduced 'encrypted button' which prevents  random surfer
from reading the email address of the seller.

 In both cases the price of the product is stored in sellers database.


 It would help if you post a specific claim you are trying to invalidate.

As far as I know, the primary encryption that is used by websites
which allow you to shop online is SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). SSL 3.0
(1996)is still the current version I believe but there obviously
previous versions of SSL. I can't find when SSL 1.0 was published, but
I know that SSL 2.0 was released in 1994.