The Easy Way To Protect Your Digital Download With Paypal IPN
Monday, January 28th, 2008
HOW IT WORKS
If you sell ebooks or software, you need a way to protect your download page from prying eyes. Many of us use Paypal. It’s easy and it’s convenient. I use them too. And the easiest way to use start using Paypal to accept payment is to create a Buy Now Button from within your Paypal account.
But to protect your digital product, you need to do something extra.
The sad truth is, Paypal’s Buy Now Button doesn’t actually protect your downloadable products. By viewing the HTML source code of your website, people can see where they will be redirected after making a payment using Paypal. And knowing this information, people can just type that address in the browser, skipping the part where they make the payment.
But Paypal has implemented (since years ago) a mechanism that you can use to verify and approve orders before allowing access to your download page. And all that can be automated, so you don’t have to do it manually.
This is known as the Paypal IPN (Instant Payment Notification). You can get a manual at Paypal at Paypal’s IPN page.
Before I tell you about how to implement this with your product, let me first tell you how it works.
