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What is credited as the first item sold securely over the web, in 1994?
Claims of 'firsts' in e-commerce vary, so treat this as the commonly cited one.
On 11 August 1994 Dan Kohn's company NetMarket reportedly processed a credit card purchase of Sting's album 'Ten Summoner's Tales' in an encrypted web session. The buyer was a friend of Kohn in Philadelphia, and the sale is often cited as the first secure retail transaction over the Web. Press coverage at the time described it as proof that card numbers could be sent safely.
Several other firsts compete for the title, depending on how 'sold online' is defined. Online commerce through earlier services such as CompuServe, and electronic data interchange between businesses, existed well before the Web. The 1994 claim is narrower: a consumer purchase on the Web with encryption protecting the card number.
The security mechanism is the important part. Encryption scrambles the card details in transit so that eavesdroppers on the network cannot read them; commonly cited accounts say NetMarket used public-key encryption software, though I have not confirmed the exact tool. Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which later evolved into TLS, soon made such protection routine in browsers. Because dates and details come from retellings rather than a single archive, they are best treated as the commonly cited account instead of an exact record.