Re: Storing Credit Card Numbers, etc.

> I'm new to PHP and to e-commerce. Needless to say, I've done a lot of > studying over the last few weeks and I'm ready to dive in head first! Actually, you're not... Sorry. The fact that you want to store data in flat files, and that you want to store CREDIT CARD INFO the way you describe tells me that you haven't read enough. > I'll be building an e-commerce site and I'll be using PHP. I'd like > customers to have the option of saving their information so that they don't > have to enter it each time they purchase -- much like Buy.com does or like > Amazon.com's One-Click feature. Those are nice features, *IF* the information is stored and accessed properly. > This means that the customer will be storing information like one or more > credit cards, shipping addresses, billing addresses, etc. > > I'm planing on storing all information in flat files so that I don't have > the additional expense of using MySQL (My ISP is charging 24.95/month extra > for MySQL service). Consider moving to a different server. $24.95/month should get you everything you need including MySQL *UNLESS* you're a high-volume site with 10,000+ hits/day or heavy bandwidth like audio/video. > So the question is: How can I store each customer's information safely? Can > I use .htaccess and .htpasswd to help me out? Or don't they even apply? .htaccess and htpasswd would be okay for AUTHENTICATION of a few people, but if your server is running PHP as a Module, you're better off using PHP to do the HTTP Authentication. See the PHP manual online for sample code. http://php.net/ Authenticating a user as a specific customer is COMPLETELY SEPARATE from safely storing their credit card information. > My intention is to store the user's password encoded with md5 or something > and also to develop my own cipher for disguising the credit card numbers as > well. > > Any suggestions? Don't. md5 is useless for this, and developing your own cipher is out-and-out silly unless you are a cryptography expert. When Amazon et al store a credit card number, they have a very specific custom setup for that, involving: A separate dedicated computer *NOT* directly connected to the Internet to store the cc info. These machines are: accessible via a SECOND Ethernet card in the web-servers invisible to the outside world only accept connections to the Database server -- no other software installed only accept data from that one Ethernet cable physically accessible only to trusted few Further, even their web-servers are DEDICATED machines, not shared-access at an ISP. These machines will have an extremely limited number of users able to directly access them. Yours has several hundred untrusted users. In short, if you are balking at $24.95 a month for MySQL, your budget is *NOWHERE* *NEAR* within reach of the hardware/software/facilities required to safely STORE credit card numbers. By all means, feel free to hook up with a third-party firm to process your credit cards in real-time. But you'll have to forego the STORAGE of credit card info feature for now. -- WARNING richard@zend.com address is an endangered species -- Use ceo@l-i-e.com Wanna help me out? Like Music? Buy a CD: http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm Volunteer a little time: http://chatmusic.com/volunteer.htm