Phishing

Phishing(fish for information) is one type of criminal activities which use social engineering technique attempt to trick people in order to get the personal sensitive information such as account username, password, credit card information fraudulently through the internet.

User receives an e-mail that is pretend a true company or bank like paypal, ebay, HSBC bank and etc sent by phisher. In the e-mail, it provide link to a fake spoof websites. The users feel that they are login in to the real company or bank’s website. The user unknowingly provides the personal information to the phishers.

Some identification of phishing mail:

1."Dear customer"- normally,if the company or bank send to you,they will use your full name.

2. most companies wouldn't ask or confirm personal information through the e-mail or phone.

3.most companies wouldn't require customers to reply in a short period.

4.you can type the company's website yourself , it is more safety than click the link in e-mail.

5.e-mail maybe in poor grammar or misspelling.

Some latest examples:

prevention methods:
1. Use firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware software to protect your computer system. Some phishing e-mail contains virus, trojan, other threats.
2.To ensure your browser, system software and other applications have the latest security updates available. it can reduce the risk.
3.alert the address of the page should start with "https://" not just "http://" and the Lock icon should be displayed in the browser's status bar.
4.Don't want click on the link in the e-mail which is to access banks or companies' websites in order to login in with personal information.Eg. passwords, username
5.Use anti-phishing software which can disable all links in suspected phishing emails or can check with some websites help you to determine whether it is a phishing mail.


Some reference websites:

http://anti-phishing.org/

http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

The internet security issues are always being discussed due to the development of technology. Besides provides convenient, internet also become a channel for illegal activities such as unauthorized access to others information. The following are some of the suggestions that can be used to safeguard our personal and financial data.

For individual, we are always advised to keep our password and username privately and only enter it in the secure and creditable website. Before give out our information and password, it is better for us that read the website's Privacy and Security Policies and look for the “locks” icon, especially for the financial site; we should trust the “https” website rather than the “http” and check the valid certificate icon. Beside that, the software such as the firewall, antispyware and antivirus programs are also able to increase the security level by filter the unauthorized websites. Other than that, to prevent become a victims, you are advised not to open any mystery attachments because it might be a trap to lure you.

For the organization, it is essential to protect customers, employees and organization information confidentiality. Ways to enhance security included set up an authorization such as password to authorize certain people to access certain database, set up authentication to allow authorized employees to maintain the database or server and function with the useful and up to date antispyware and antivirus software. Furthermore, the business with e-payment, its website must contain an encryption function to protect the payment transactions undisturbed.

The following links are other guidance that may help in protecting your information when using the internet, hope these are useful to you:

• http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/103893/Six-Ways-to-Safeguard-Your-Online-Assets
• http://www.msisac.org/awareness/news/2007-03.cfm
• http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST06-008.html
• http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/computers/shoponline/shoponline.htm
• http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs23-shopping.htm
• http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/safeguard-personal-information-online-1282.php

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

When conducting e-commerce transactions, do you have sufficient confidence on the security? Can you sure that the web page is the official web page? Therefore, there is a practices called certification programme. This is performed by the third party in order to verify and authenticate the web site.

The “third parties” who issue the digital certificate to verify and authenticate the website is called certificate authorities. Digital certificate actually can be considered as an electronic “credit card” that establishes the credentials when conducting business or performing transactions on the Web and normally it contains the holder’s name, validity period, public key information and a signed hash of the certificate data. There are some famous certificate authorities (CA) such as VeriSign and MSC Trustgate in Malaysia which is established in 1999.

____________________________________________________________________________________
VeriSign- www.verisign.com



MSC Trustgate- www.msctrustgate.com



____________________________________________________________________

Normally, the certificate requestor’s computer generates the public and private keys. After that, the company keeps its private key in its local system and sends the public key to the CA just above mentioned. Then, the CA will verify the company’s identity and make sure that the requested certificate is valid for the given requestor. If it is permitted, the CA signs the public key and binds it to a certificate. Lastly, the CA will issues and manages the certificate until its expiration or in the situation of revocation.

Basically, the application of third party certification programme is able to enhance the reliability of the e-commerce site and therefore improve the customer trust.

Notes: In my opinion, we need to confirm that we are performing the transactions in the “real” website when we are conducting the e-commerce transactions, one of the method is we can check the website have the certificate icon or not, or the website have been verified by those CAs or not.

An example of an E-Commerce success and its causes--GAP.COM

“This is about being clicks and mortar – letting customers access the Gap brands, whether in the store or online”
– Ron Beegle, E-VP, Gap Inc.Direct

Link: www.gap.com

Being the first bricks-and-mortar retailers to venture online, today, Gap Incorporation is one of the world’s largest specialty retailers. Out of US$15.8 billion revenue in year 2007, US$903 million was contributed through e-commerce.

Company Background

In 1969, Don Fisher and his wife Doris opened the first GAP store in San Francisco. The company took name from “generation gap”. Within a year, GAP reached $2 million sale. Stayed ahead of industry trends, Gap began to develop its online strategy. An online store was introduced in 1998 at www.gap.com, GapKids and BabyGap went online, followed, in1999 by BananaRepublic.com and oldnavy.com.

Causes of success

Gap was in retail industry for around 40 years. People trusted the brand. Customers already knew products, sizes and styles. This relieves the fear of buying clothes online. Secondly, company was spread all over the world which made online customers reachable by offline stores. Customers can return online products that did not fit to any Gap store whereas pure-plays customers had to mail back products. Company saved 49.9% of total costs for a Bricks-and-Mortar department stall.

Assessment of Typical Expenses of a Bricks-and-Mortar Department Store

An example of an E-Commerce failure and its causes-- Kozmo.com

Kozmo.com was one of the failure cases in the E-commerce industry and was founded in 1997 by investment bankers Joseph Park and Yong Kang with $4.5 million capital which rose from private investors.

The mainly service is delivering the goods with an attractive idea that is free of delivery charge. Customers can order wide variety products such as video, books and snack food from internet and it would be free delivered to them within one an hour even during the rainy day. It was attracted a lot of customers at that time, unfortunately, a tragedy was fall to Kozmo.com because of this attractive service provided.

Although the Kozmo.com received a lot of business, but the company was still unable to cover its expenses and costs. It was obviously showed that they can not afford the delivery cost after expanding its business to seven cities. The most significant is in year 1999, it had $3.5 million in their revenue but it faced a net loss about $26.4 million. The company tried to cover it with a charge on partly transaction, but it still unable to change the fate of the Kozmo.com. In the April of year 2001, the company ran out of its money and lay off its employees.

The main causes are the delivering fee was hard to be covered from the gain of selling the product and it was too difficult to expand its business to larger market. The analysts pointed out that the Kozmo.com must increase its customers' average orders and create an efficiency route structure that messengers can make multiple deliveries on something approaching a door-to-door basis. It is truly a loss of internet user that unable to enjoy this convenience service.

References:

http://www.cyberspacers.com/news/dot_com_flops/
http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/6568.html?welcome=1213463999
http://tim.blog.kosmo.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/8/1119285.html
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/29/where-are-they-now-kozmo-com
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-517775.html

Identify and compare the revenue model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay

Nowadays, Google, Amazon.com and eBay are most popular website or company in the internet. Many people feel curious that how those companies to generate huge income through internet. Now, let me tell you all about the five revenue model of those companies.

-Sales revenue is the income receive from sales of goods and services.
Google doesn’t have focus on the sales in their website, thus do not have sales revenue.
Amazon.com. has selling books, CDs, and videos through the website.
eBay has Marketplace where goods trading take place.
In sales revenue part, majority revenue of Amazon.com is come from this area.

-Transaction fees are the commission earned based on the volume of the transactions.
Google’s business less involve in the sales transaction.
Amazon.com collects fees only when the item sells.
-http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161240
eBay may earned transaction fees from each successful transaction made by the bidders or sellers.
-http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html
In transaction fees, ebay’s transaction revenue are more than Google and Amazon.

-Subscription fees are the fixed fees paid to get some services on monthly or yearly basis.
Google: For Premier Edition of organization package in gmail, it needs to pay $50 per user account on yearly basis. Other services no need to pay the fees.
Amazon.com: Some Digital Content made available to audience are on a subscription basis, this including, but not limited to, electronic newspapers, magazines, journals and other periodicals. Amazon has the right to change subscription terms and fees from time to time.
-http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200144530&qid=1213378239&sr=1-2
-http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200169380&qid=1213378239&sr=1-1
eBay: eBay Stores offers three subscription tiers with features designed to boost your success through every stage of business growth.
-http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/Subscriptions.html
Amazon and ebay’s subscription fees are more than Google.

-Advertising fees are the advertisers paid the payment to publisher because advertisers want to offer their goods or services to public and post the advertisement on publishers’ website.
Google: Most of the revenue of Google are come from advertising fees, the services provided is Google Adwords.
-https://adwords.google.com/select/Login
Amazon.com. allows merchants to upload the product catalog feeds and bid for advertising space on the Amazon.com website.
-http://www.amazon.com/Advertising/b/?node=276241011
eBay also allow advertiser to publish their advertisement on eBay’s website.
In the revenue of Google, it is about 99% come from advertising revenue.

-Affiliate fees are the commissions received by companies for referring customers’ link to others' websites and helps in promoting the products and services. These fees include cost per thousand impression (CPM), cost per click (CPC), and cost per acquisition/action (CPA).
Google: The google adsense is a program which includes AdSense for search and AdSense for content. Google affiliate revenues are generated by those activities.
-http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Internet-Marketing/Blog-Buzz/Affiliate-Policing-and-More.htm Amazon.com: Amazon associate affiliate program is a site that links to products for sale on Amazon and can fetch the site owner a 15 percent commission on every new item sold at a discounted price.
-http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join
eBay: In eBay, if someone clicks the link and wins the auction; both side can get commission.
-http://www.imgiver.com/index/internet-marketing/article/ebay-affiliate-fees/
These three companies have affiliate income.
*Those website as a reference…

The history and evolution of E-Commerce

E-commerce is also known as electronic commerce. It is the process of buying, selling, transferring or exchanging the products, services, and/or information over the electronic system like internet and/or other computer networks.
The meaning of e-commerce has changed over the last 30 years.
Originally, e-commerce refers to the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) which are both introduced in late 1970s.
In 1980s, credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking are also accepted as forms of e-commerce.
From 1990s onwards, enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing would also additionally be included in the meaning of e-commerce.

There are several steps involved in the history and evolution of e-commerce:
1st step=>
Development of Electronic Data Interchange(EDI)- EDI is a set of standards developed in 1960s to exchange the business information and execute the electronic transactions. But, there are numbers of EDI formats to be used by business and hence the companies is unable to interact with each other. In 1984, EDI was standardized through ASC X12. This enable the companies to complete transactions with one another stably and reliably.
2nd step=>
Development of online retailing- In 1992, CompuServe offers online retail products to its customers. This is the first time that the people are able to buy things off their computer.
3rd step=>
Development of web-browser- In 1992, Mosaic web-browser was available and it was the first “point and click” web-browser. After that, Netscape browser was introduced in 1994. It provides the users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.
4th step=>
Two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched- Amazon.com and eBay.com were launched in 1995.

5th step=>
Development of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) - DSL allowed quicker access and a persistent connection to the internet. This stimulates people spend more time and money online.
6th step=>
Retailing spending over the internet- In 1999, retail spending over the Internet reaches $20 billion, according to Business.com.
7th step=>
Hackers’ Attack to the e-commerce players- In February of 2000, some major players of e-commerce such as Yahoo, eBay and Amazon were attacked by the hackers. The attacks represent the need to improve the security in the development of e-commerce.


Current step=>
E-commerce applied broadly compared with old time; however the development of e-commerce is embarrassed by the security issue.

Reference:
History of E-commerce- www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html
History of E-commerce- www.flysyk02.netfirms.com/Ecommerce/History.htm
Electronic Commerce- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce