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Online Registration Frequently Asked Questions

I'm worried about internet credit fraud. How secure is online registration?

Very. We collect your non-sensitive contact details and registration preferences via a normal http:// online webpage. Your credit card details are however processed by PayPal on a secure https:// webpage. PayPal is the worlds largest and most recognisable e-commerce merchant, and you can find more information about them at www.paypal.com . Secure webpages encrypt all the information to and from your browser, so that even if the information were to be intercepted, it would be unreadable. Furthermore, PayPal processes your credit card and transfers the funds directly to SSBP 2013, your credit card details are never transmitted to SSBP 2013, nor stored on any SSBP 2013 computers.

 

We've tried to anticipate and answer some of the commonly asked questions about the online registration process. Please read!

Exactly what does the online registration involve?

The online registration is a multistep but straightforward process:

  1. You carefully fill out your details on the online form.
  2. You press the continue button and are then taken to a page where you may check your details. You may choose to cancel the registration, in which case you will be transferred back to the SSBP 2013 page. Or you may finalise the registration by clicking the button to transfer you to the PayPal secure e-commerce site.
  3. At the PayPal site you enter your valid credit card details, and click the button to process the transaction. PayPal connects to the bank, and after a short wait you will be advised of the success/failure of the transaction.
  4. YOU DO NOT NEED A PAYPAL ACCOUNT TO PAY. You can of course use your PayPal account if you have one, but you do not need to register to process a credit card transaction.
  5. You must then allow PayPal to redirect back to the SSBP 2013 site where you are advised of the overall success/failure of your online registration. Registrations are only completed if a successful credit card transaction has occurred AND you have transferred back to SSBP 2013.
    Please note - at this stage, some browsers will pop up a courtesy window informing you that you are leaving a secure site for an insecure site. You can safely ignore this warning, as all sensitive credit details have already been processed on the secure (https:) PayPal site.
  6. If successful, your details are sent to the SSBP 2013 Secretariat. Congratulations, you are registered for SSBP 2013!

Can the online form be hacked so that I send my credit details to someone other than SSBP 2013 or PayPal?

Apart from the time you spend online at PayPal, the online form is processed entirely by CGI scripts hosted on the SSBP conference web server at http://ssbpconference.org . These scripts will ONLY run from this server, and have many security features built in to prevent them being hacked or misused. You can check in the address bar of your browser that you are at http://ssbpconference.org or https://www.paypal.com and have not been transferred to a bogus site.

How may I keep track of the status of online registration?

After the online transaction you will receive:

  1. An automatic email from SSBP 2013 with a detailed transaction status, your PayPal transaction ID and your SSBP Registration Number.
  2. Another automatic email from SSBP 2013 with a link to your registration details (in case the 1st email is blocked by spam filters).
  3. An automatic email from PayPal.

Please keep these emails for your records, as the PayPal Transaction ID and the SSBP 2013 Registration Number will make it easier to track your registration. For instance, if you know that your PayPal transaction was successful, but your SSBP 2013 registration failed, then quote the PayPal number to us and we will be able to determine if the funds were received, and register you manually. Similarly, if your registration was approved and you heard nothing back and received no receipt from the SSBP 2013 secretariat, then contact us with the SSBP 2013 registration number, so that we may track you down in our database. In the extremely unlikely event of credit fraud, any bogus SSBP 2013 registration number you may have been assigned will be instantly recognisable as such to us.

I click buttons but nothing seems to happen, what is going on?

When you click on any of the buttons during the online registration, it takes a certain amount of time to communicate with the webservers. Network congestion may also slow things down. Dialup modem users may also experience a delay. Please do not click buttons multiple times , you will confuse the poor computers! Click a button and wait 60 seconds. If nothing has happened after that time, then hit the stop button on your browser, and try clicking the button again. If you really have no luck, then contact the SSBP 2013 secretariat.