Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

E-auction fraud is a growing epidemic worldwide, as online shopping has grown significantly every year that online shopping has been available.Most e-auction fraud cases involve straightforward scams where consumers allegedly win merchandise by being the highest bidder. All sounds good until they send the payment and never receive the merchandise.Sometimes auction fraud cases involve slick descriptions that are presented and worded in a way that most people would miss important details.

Types of e-auction frauds:-

1. Bid shielding is the practice of placing a low bid in an auction online and having a second person enter a bid that is high enough to get other bidders to drop out or not even bid. Then at the last second, the high bid is retracted and the low bid wins.

2. Misleading descriptions where sometimes descriptions include too much flowery language or omit important details.

3. A fake photo is where almost every listing has a picture of the item with it. Dishonest sellers will put up a misleading photo or even a photo of a different item.

It is important for users to know how to protect themselves from these frauds. The followings are several steps in protecting yourself against e-auction fraud:

1. Feedback forum
It set up a forum to allow the buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It also provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with others. All the information and history of any sellers could be acquired through the forum. Review the feedback rating for the seller, and use common sense; if the seller has a history of negative feedback, then the participants do not bid with the particular seller.

2. Escrow Service
Is a licensed and regulated company acted as an independent third party. Buyer mails the payment to escrow services which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checks out.

3. User Verification System
Higher level of verification can be qualify by asked the bidders to offering their IC number, driver’s license number and also date of birth. The voluntary programs encourage users to supply information for online verification.

4. Authentication Service
It is to determine whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. It also very difficult to perform because of their training and experience, experts can detect counterfeits based on subtle detail.

5. Grading services
Is a way to determine the physical condition of an item, such as ‘poor quality’ or ‘mint condition’. Different item have different grading systems. For example, trading cards are graded from A1 to F1, whereas coins are graded from poor to perfect uncirculated.

6. Nonpayment Punishment
To help protect sellers, 1st time nonpayment results in a friendly warning. A sterner warning is issued for a 2nd time offence, a 30 days suspension for a 3rd offence, and indefinite suspension for a 4th offence.

7. Appraisal services
Use a variety of methods to appraise items. It includes expert assessment of authenticity and condition, and reviewing what comparable items have sold for in the marketplace in recent months. An appraised value is usually accurate at the time of appraisal but may change over time as an item becomes more or less popular in the marketplace.

8. Item verification
Is a way of confirm the identity and evaluate the condition of an item. Third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purpose. It provides a way of tracking an item if it charges ownership in future.

9. Physical inspection
It can eliminate many problems especially for collectors’ item. When the seller and buyer are in the same vicinity, it is easy to arrange for such inspections. Ebay offers inspection services on a regional basis, so buyers can arrange for nearby inspections.

10. Insurance policy
eBay offers insurance underwritten by Lloyd's of London. Users are covered up to $ 200, with a $25 deductible. The program is provided at no cost to eBay users. Supplementary insurance is available from companies such as AuctionInsurance.com. At other auction sites, such as Amazon.com/ auction, some insurance is provided, but extra insurance may be added.

Tips for Buyers

1. Identify the seller and check the seller’s feedback rating.

2. Do your homework. Be sure you understand what you’re bidding on, its relative value and all terms and conditions of the sale, including the seller’s return policies and who pays for shipping.

3. Establish your top price and stick to it.

Related article

How to prevent e-auction fraud
http://www.crimcheck.com/background-check-news/whats-internet-auction-fraud-and-how-do-i-prevent-it

How to avoid online auction fraud
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/2002/05/07/yaukey.htm

A warning to auction sites – Pareto is dead
http://leapingcat.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/a-warning-to-auction-sites-pareto-is-dead/

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blogs are giving established companies and obscure brands alike the ability to connect with their audiences on a more personal level, build trust, collect valuable feedback and foster strengthened business relationships. More importantly, these companies are enjoying tangible returns in their blogging investment in the form of increased sales, partnerships, business opportunities, press coverage and lead generation.

Corporate blog can be very useful for an organization. It can be divided to two types which are internal blog and external blog. An internal blog is normally accessed through the corporation's Intranet. It helps the employees communicate with each others and share their experiences. It also helps the communication between different layers of management. The employees of an organization can exchange their opinion and discuss their expertise which will help in their daily work.

An external blog is a blog that can be view by public. Public can leave their comment in the blog. It is useful for organizations to get the direct feedback from the customers. By using the external corporate blog, companies can communicate with clients, employees, the media, prospective employees or customers. Corporate organizations can even conduct their public relations activities through blogging by posting press releases and updates about new company products and services on the blog. The corporate blog become a platform for the most direct communication between the corporate organizations with outsiders. It will help in building better relationship with customers. Blogging is less formal and customers will fell more comfortable to communicate with the organizations.

Corporate Blogging Risks

1) Negative Comments. Companies are often very sensitive to criticism. Negative comments can be offset somewhat with a consistent and clear comment and moderation policy. Also, most readers tend to trust a site more that includes both positive and negative information.

2) Neglect- Companies need to spend time and incur costs to maintain and update their blogs regularly.

3) Misunderstanding the Audience-The blog audience is not the same as the company’s typical customer base, as blog readers are universally more tech-savvy, up-to-date on industry news, and more passionate about the company’s products and the organization, and also likely to be highly critical of dishonesty or insincerity.

Blogs are basically beneficial to the company if used well, and a menace if used poorly. Therefore, companies which participate in blogging should reduce its risks by managing effectively with the correct corporate blogging strategy to the benefit of their companies.

Five Tips to Succeed Corporate Blogging, which is available at http://blog.planetdomain.com
1.Plan Ahead and Post Regularly
2.Be Original and Fresh
3.Personality Counts
4.Social Media Means “Social”
5.Write Well, or Find Someone Who Can

Top 10 Corporate Blog Rankings

#10: The Otter Group

#9: English Cut

#8: SunBelt Software

#7: GM Fast Lane

#6: Adobe Software

#5: Ask.com

#4: Tom Peters

#3: Yahoo! Search

#2: O’Reilly Radar

#1: Google

(you may click on the link to view the corporate blog)

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

E-Government is the use of e-commerce to provide access to government information, services and interacts with people to increase efficiency, convenience and accessibility of public sector services to individuals, business partners and its internal operation.

The benefits of launched the e-government is to improve the government operates internally as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. The implementation of electronic government started with the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysian government in 1996. The implementation of e-Government in Malaysia heralds the beginning of a journey of reinventing the government by transforming the way it operate, modernizing and enhancing its service delivery. Simultaneously, it will improve information flow and processes within the government, improve the speed and quality of policy development, and improve coordination and enforcement. This enabled the government to be more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

The Implementation of E-Government in Malaysia

· Electronic Procurement (eP)
The purpose of electronic procurement is to re-engineer, automate, and transform current procurement system. The project would cover central contract, direct purchase and sale of supplies and services through the internet. It provides real time bidding solutions for buyers and sellers that bring an unprecedented level of profitability, control and simplicity to corporate procurement and liquidation processes.

· Project Monitoring System (PMS)
This system is used to monitor the implementation of government’s development projects from the high-level management down to activity levels. This enables government agencies to have a better management and access information.

· Generic Office Environment (GOE)
The purpose is to introduce a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of Multimedia information technology. This will enable efficient communication, allowing collaboration across all workers, and ensuring right information reaching the right people in a timely manner.

· Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)
This project provides a one-stop job search and job advertisement platform for Malaysian jobseekers and employers.

· E-Syariah
E-Syariah provides a case of management structure that integrates the processes related to management cases for the Syariah Court.

· Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

This project provides a single interface for government employees to perform human resource functions effectively and efficiency. It also helps to standardize all human resource processes for federal state, statutory body, and local authority services.

· Electronic services (E-Services)
E-services can conduct the transactions with Government agencies, such as the Road Transport Department (RTD) and private utility companies such as Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) and Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) through various convenient channels such as the internet. This system can help in solving the traffic jams and queuing problems.

Problems faced by e-government implementation

1. Technological barrier - Lack of technical infrastructure.
2. Lacks of public awareness - public are not aware of the online services that offered.
3. Online behavior – Malaysians remain skeptical on using the electronic transactions especially on online banking about buying and selling from an internet store.


Citizen's Adoption Strategies

E– Services has emerged and become gaining attention and importance for the citizen. Citizens expect and demand governmental services with a high degree of quality, quantity, and availability in a 24-hour. Nowadays, governments all over the world are developing information systems and electronic services that have the capacity to meet the citizen’s needs and demands. The ease of use, compatibility, and trustworthiness are significant predictors of citizens’ intention to use the e-services. The government should also concern with the accuracy, relevancy and completeness information that provided to the citizens. Beside that, the successful of implement the E-Government in Malaysia is a way to determine Malaysia’s progress towards the vision 2020. With adoption the strategies of e-government in Malaysia, it can help to improve the legislation on personal data protection, privacy, and security that can protect citizen’s private information. In others way, it can help to provide e-citizen education, skills and training to every citizen are ready and able to adopt online government services.

Blooming.com

Blooming Florist become more famous in Malaysia for the past twenty two years. It started the business in 1981 and managed by May and Martin Cheah. They provide floral fresh cut flowers for all occasions such as Roses, Tulips, Gerberas, Lilies and Heliconias. They also provide services like fruit baskets, hampers, gifts, cakes and candies to the customers. Blooming Florist has six retail outlets that links with 75,000 florists worldwide through its membership in Interflora Pacific Unit Limited. Their commitment is to provide QUALITY FLOWERS and QUALITY SERVICE to the customers.

Besides that, packages are provided by following seasonal and each cultural festival. All can search from blooming.com.my. Foreign customer can purchase flower via blooming florist or interflora because blooming florist is one of the member of Interflora and the delivery is provided globally which show in blooming florist website.

From the website of Blooming Florist, there also have icons of ‘shop by products’ and ‘shop by occasions’. It makes the customers to shop the website in more convenient way. Under the ‘shop by occasions’ category, there have occasions such as ‘happy birthday’, ‘wedding’ and ‘new baby’.


To order any of the items, you will just have to click on the picture of the item or the 'order now' button and it will lead you to a form as shown below:


After filling in the details, just click the 'add to shopping cart' button and the following box would appear:

Here, you can update or delete the items that you have added to the shopping cart. Besides that, there are certain products available as add ons to the flowers or packages.


When you have finished shopping, just click the check out button to purchase the items. Furthermore, if you are not happy with the arrangement of flowers or other products, you can also ask them to customize the product for you.

Customer can pay for the purchases thru online credit card payment, online banking, mobile payment, pay using Kawanku ATM, open bill payment and also cash payment in their retail outlet.

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers.

What is Pre-paid cash card?

Pre-paid cash card is a rechargeable stored value card that can be used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline system. The amount to be paid will be deducted from the value. Once the initial value has been completely used up, user can top up and continue using it to make transaction. With a pre-paid cash card, we can have faster journey and we do not need to carry so much cash with us all the time. With just a card we can go anywhere we want. It is so convenient and safe.

Prepaid Cash Cards – Why people use them?

Nowadays, people can limit their spending with their prepaid cash card that load funds onto the card and use the money. There are many people tend or already have their own prepaid cash cards, why is it so? The several reasons are as below:

1. Remain in control of one’s money, keep track all of activity online or by phone.

2. Free balance alerts –Some card providers will inform users on how much cash they have.

3. Eliminate check cashing fees and enjoy immediate access to your money through direct deposit of your paycheck, government payment or other income sources, no bank account needed.

4. Avoid bounced check fees; always know exactly how much money you have to spend. The prepaid card can help protect you from over spending.

Examples of Pre-paid cash card

Touch ‘n Go (TnG) smart card is an electronic payment system that can be used by Malaysian at all highways, major public transport in Klang Valley, selected parking sites and theme park. Well, it is expanding its business to retail purchase by starting with fast food industry that enables consumers to buy dough nut, burger or fast-food from 21 outlets such as Burger King, 7-Eleven, Dunkin’ Donut. It is imitating the success of Hong Kong’s Octopus Card by setting 5 to 10% of the card holders for retail purchase as current target of the company.

Pre-paid Vista Cash Card is issued by Four Oaks Bank & Trust Company that given the opportunity for consumers with poor credit record and young children by not spending
more than the balance on the card. Visa permits travelers access to money at automated teller machines in 65 countries and book the train tickets by offering prepaid cash card such as Metro Card in New York City.

Octopus Card was launched in Hong Kong on year 1997, September. It is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card which used to transfer electronic payments in online in offline system. It is widely used in payment system for transportation, supermarkets, fast food restaurant, car parks and other pint of sale application such as service stations and vending machines that have achieved good outcomes.

For further information, please refer those links:

1.http://www.startecredit.com/creditpages/prepaid-credit-cards-applications-prerpaid-reloadable-credit-cards.htm

2. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5621787.html

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card

4. http://www.touchngo.com.my/

Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

Nowadays, cost of people living has increased and it indirectly creates many problems towards many peoples. Many people like to use future money (credit card) as they didn’t have enough cash in hands. This made the numbers of credit card debts increase until create the major problems of bankruptcies each year. This is because many people never realized of its consequences of financial and non financial perspectives.

Factor that bring the causes of credit card debts

1. Poor money management
Poor money management is one of the bigger causes that why people have accumulated many credit card debts. Due to poor money management, people are not aware to conduct a monthly spending plan and do not keep monthly bills or receipt to record how many money are spends. Without keeping bills or receipt, people will never realized how much their spending on the product, and raise a number of debts in one month. With using credit cards, people will like to keep on spending with using the future money without perceive that they are unable to pay back the debts.

2. No saving cushion
When people using credit cards, they would like to use the future money and have not extra money to save in bank. When people are spending more than their income, they will be very hard to manage their savings accounts. The benefit of saving is to help you in cover your over expenses, in the case when you faced problems of divorce, job layoff, illness and others emergency expenses.

3. Unemployment
Due to bad economies, many people lost their job and unable to maintain their living expenses, this makes people using the future money (credit card) to cover their future living expenses. For households, they need cover many expenses purposes to maintain their current lifestyle by over using the credit card. This may lead to a rise in debt when expenses are not cut down to cover the reduction in income.

Prevention methods

1. Making a budget
We need to have a clear budget plan and need to keep all the expenses of receipt or bills in order to record how much money was use. This can help us to perceive that we will not overspending our budget that we have set before and prevent from the debts.

2. Self control and discipline
People who using credit cards should learn how to have a better self control and discipline in order to learn not to overspend it. People can control themselves by limit their credits cards amount by stop them to use the money if they was expenses more than their budget.

3. Contacting and dealing with creditors
You can address the problem with creditors instantly to indentify whether they could give revised on payment arrangement when you facing trouble on to pay off the debts. If the collection money from creditors is not fair, you can refer to Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to indentify debts problems.

Electronic currency

Electronic currency also known as e-money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency and which refer to money or scrip that is exchanged only electronically. It involves the use of computer networks, internet, and the digital stored value systems. The examples of electronic currency are Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit. EFT refers to the computer-based systems used to perform financial transactions electronically while direct deposit is a banking term used to refer to certain systems used to transfer money.

Electronic Currency Trading System (ECTS) is an investment platform that offers its customers a safe, efficient way to trade foreign currencies against the strength and weakness of the US dollar. It involves converting base currency to a foreign currency at the market exchange rates through an online brokerage account.

Electronic currency allows its holder to buy the goods and services that the vastness of the internet offers. It can let you to do business and earn money from the investment by the lost transaction cost, it unlike the store business that will eat up your profit with a huge amount of fees. There are some examples of websites that can let people to do e-currency trading such as MG E-currency, JT GOLD.com.

There are some benefits of using the electronic currency. Firstly, the currencies can serve as universal media of exchange. If user acquired a global electronic currency, he or she can enter into any transactions around the world without paying any exchange fees. Secondly, the currencies provide global units of account that enable buyer and sellers able to compare which goods and services are worth without any calculation. The third benefit is the global e-currency serve as stable stores of value. The competition will drive out the unstable products from the market and the national monies, the private currencies will not be subject to the inflationary monetary policies of national governments and the special interests they represent.

Major electronic currencies on the net are:

PayPal located in San Jose, California, PayPal was founded in 1998 and was acquired by eBay in 2002. It is the safer, easier way to pay and get paid online. The service is available in many ways through credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit or account balances, without sharing financial information. It enables global ecommerce by making payments possible across different locations, currencies, and languages.

Ikobo is an online payment system. Users can send and receive money online instantly from over 700,000 ATMs in over 170 international countries.

Moneybookers enable users to pay anyone with an email address. The recipient receives the payment instantly. It beats the cost, delay and inconvenience of traditional payment methods. Clients can send money from a credit card, transfer money to and from a bank account. Merchant business services offered with site integration for accepting payments.
Electronic currency- E-Micropayment systems:

The following are companies with e-micro payment products:

- Pay Loadz
- Bit Pass
- Peppercoin
- Pay stone

PayLoadz offers a unique digital download delivery service for anyone wishing to sell intangible goods online. Payloadz is a service to sell intangible products such as software, e-books, digital art, manuals, articles and files. It is an automated delivery service. This means that seller can go on vacation without worrying about sending download links to the consumers every time a payment is made.

Bitpass was one of the online payment systems for digital content and services. It was founded in December, 2002 and the co-founder was Kurt Huang. Besides, it also partnered with major technology and financial services companies such as Microsoft, PayPal, the Royal Bank of Scotland and First Data. Bit Pass system works similarly to a pre-paid telephone card such as you sign up for the service and put money into your account using a credit card or PayPal, which gives you credit towards the purchase of content.

Peppercoin(peppercoin.com) was founded by Ron Rivest and Silvio Micali with a vision to enable convenient and profitable credit and debit card use for small payments. The users do not require depositing credit in advance. All of the things they need to do, it is just enter their credit or debit cards information with the merchant online as usual.

Paystone Technologies Corp. is a private Internet payment and money transfer company dedicated to providing secure, easy, real time Internet transactions. Paystone was founded in 2001 and it provides an inexpensive online payment method without the risk of chargeback from fraudulent credit card use. Paystone can efficiently handle small financial transactions (micropayments) as low as $0.25. The ability to process micropayments opens a whole new world for entrepreneurs of all sizes. A small business or individual now has a method of generating revenue from their website quickly, easily and inexpensively. This makes a whole new range of content available to personal account holders. The large online merchant can also realize the full benefits of the Paystone solution to expand and increase the profitability of their business.

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia.

What is 3rd party certification?

Third Party Certification (TPC) endorsement has been used as one of the methods to instill consumers’ trust. Creating initial trust through implementation of TPC is very important because the consumer has a tendency to trust brand names. The TPC programme requires the posting of a website privacy statement to inform a visitor about what personal information a web site may collect from them and how it will be used and disclosed among other features.

MCS Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd is a licensed Certification Authority ( CA ) operating within the Multimedia Super Corrider. MSC Trustgate was started their operation in Malaysia since 1999. It offers complete security solution and leading trust service that are needed by all the categories. Msc Trustgate helps to secure the open network communications and business transaction. The vision of Trustgate is to enable organizations to conduct their business securely over the Internet, as much as what they have been enjoying in the physical world.

Trustgate provide Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to assist all the companies in conducting their business over the Internet. PKI Technologies help the organizations to enhance the security of the data and manage identification credentials from users and organization. It helps to secure by based on the exchange of digital certificates between authenticated users and trusted resources. The E-Commerce users can design their own PKI to meet the preferable security and technical requirements of their organization such as confidentiality where PKI users will use it to encrypt data that is stored or transmitted.

3rd party certification program will enhance customer trust because of:

1.Efficient of management of digital certificates.

· Customer authorization for digital certificate and certificate issuance is done via Web-based service. Both customer and administrator services are browser-based and accessed via the Web. Hence it will boost customer trust because they can access the digital certification and can inquiry about the certificate through online.

2.Complete control over digital certificate issuance, usage, certificate content.

· By having this application customer would have complete control over the service level and certificate unlike other public CA deployment model which customer only can rely on the public CA.

3.Easy to use and manage with Web-based user and administrator services.

· Customer can register or apply for extra certification through via web hence it will enable the customer to more believe on the third party programme because so easy to use and doesn’t have huge procedure to follow in order to register it.

4.Scalability

· Customer will have a better solution provided by the administrator if got certain or any threats happen toward the company system. They customer can contact the administrator hence the administrator will provide a solution to the customer to solve the problem. Hence it will increase customer trust because efficient and effective managed of the program.

VeriSign SSL Certificates is the public encrypted key that Webmaster sends to CA which is a standard part of most web server and web browser packages when works in conjunction with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. VeriSign will review the credentials and check through all the background of organization to ensure that the claim of organization before issuing any server certificate. The browser will verify its business purpose through ID automatically when browser connects to a legitimate site with VeriSign SSL Certificates. After that, information received by Web visitor is identical to encryption between browser and server and no modification is taken place.

VeriSign is one of trust brand on internet to further enhance operation of e-commerce because it gives confidence to customer in communication and online business transactions. In turn, the company will receive accurate information that the customer could not refute later. Additional protection against the misuse and expired certificates is provided. Thus, there was nearly one million times that people have clicked on VeriSign Secured Seals during year 2002.

Related links
1. http://www.msctrustgate.com
2. http://www.verisign.com

How to safeguard our personal and financial data

Internet is a public network that connecting millions of computers throughout the world. Through telephone wires and satellite links, internet users can share information in a variety of forms. When we surf the internet or register to become a member, the procedure we need is to fill in some personal information. Internet is not a safe place, because hackers have the ability to intercept and use that information, such as credit card numbers and expiry dates to falsely do the transactions. We need to take some activities to increase the internet security and decrease the data stolen probability.

Here are few approaches on how to safeguard our personal and financial data:

1. Password protect

Do not reveal any password that related our personal and financial data to anyone. After using any of the Financial Data Center or member services, must remember to log out properly before leaving the Financial Data Center. Avoid using passwords that are easy for someone to guess, such as the name of your favorite brand or your date of birth and never to write it down on the paper and put inside your wallet or briefcase.

2. Keep credit cards to a minimum

Use a credit card with a low limit while using online purchase or mail-order, because it may take risk if your personal and financial data steal for dishonest clerk. So we should not easily to disclose any personal and financial data information and only keep the ones you actually use and destroy any that you no use and shredding it.

3. Practice safe ATM use

Use your free hand to shield the keypad when entering your PIN. If you see anyone suspicious, do come back later. When your transaction is complete, pocket your card and any cash and count it later in the safety of your locked car or home.

4. Match your receipts to your billing statement each month

Make sure you have not been billed for fraudulent purchases. If you spot any suspicious transactions such as charges you don’t recognize, or duplicate charges. Therefore you must contact your card issuer immediately.

5. Encrypt the information before send it out

When the financial data is transmitted from one location to another, we should encrypt the information before send it out. This is a secure ways to protect our data from stolen by others, because the outsiders are unable to read the encrypted message, only you and the party who received your message can read through the information.

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

What is Phishing?

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent (theft) process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing known as a nontechnical attack, it uses social pressures to trick computer users into compromising computer networks to which those individuals have access.

Following are the few examples of the phishing e-mails:
1. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/images/using/54304_fake_url_1.jpg
2. http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/advice/Phishing-email.asp

Prevention Methods:

1. Be cautious for opening file from emails that request of your financial information

We need to be cautious when opening any attachment or downloading files from e-mails that you received. You also need to aware regardless of who sent the e-mail to you. When you surf the internet, you need to be aware for the fake website which directly ask for your detail financial information and not to login the website, try to solve the problem at the bank itself.

2. Block the phishing e-mails by various spam filters

Phishers are usually use e-mails as “bait” to attract the potential victims. They can send out large amount of spoofed e-mails which are seemed from legitimate organizations. The phishers hide their identities when sending the spoofed e-mails, therefore, if anti-spam systems can determine whether an e-mail is sent by the attackers, the phishing attacks will be decreased dramatically.

3. Use strong passwords and change them often

Strong passwords combine with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, which make them difficult for other people to guess. Use a different password for your each account can help you in avoid them to access.

4. Don’t straight away click the suspicious website

Remember all the domain name of the company and try not to click the link that are available inside the suspicious website, because it may contain any fake website that will attract you to click in.

The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

In this century, Internet is becoming more and more famous. It is becoming part of our life as a lot of things can be done with Internet such as online banking, online shopping, communicating with our overseas friends and so on. However, it is important to safeguard our data when online. It is an important issue on online security for all Internet users. It is sad to say that there are various threats to online security such as viruses, Malware, Adware, hackers’ attacks and Trojans. These are the common online threat and this can lead web users to financial loss, information theft and so on.

Examples of threat of online security:

Virus – it is a piece of Malicious software code that inserts itself into a host, including the operating systems to propagate and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. It requires the host program be run to activate it. The virus can easily spread by a user sending it over a network on the internet or by carrying it on a removable medium such as USB drive, floppy disk. The possible destruction of virus will be deleting important files and turning our computer into a worthless wreck.

Worms – is a software programs that runs independently and consuming the resources of its hosts in orders to maintain itself and capable of propagating a complete working version of itself onto another machine. When the compute infect of worms, the computer will slow starting and slow running. It’ll also face unexpected or frequent system failures. Therefore, the macro worm is a worm that is executed when the application object that contains the macro is opened or a particular procedure is executed.

Trojan horse – is programs that appear to have useful function but contains a hidden function that presents a security risk. Trojan horse unlike worms, which self propagate and require user cooperation. It’ll destructive program that can cause serious damage by deleting files and destroying information on our system. Trojan horse are also known to create a back door on our computer that gives malicious users access to the system, possibly allowing confidential or personal information to be compromised.

Securing Computer Networks

There have several effective security computer systems to help users to secure own data privacies.

1. Firewall

Firewall is a software application that acts as a filter between a company's private network and the Internet. As a result, there can reduce the possibilities to receive virus, worms and so forth into users' computer systems.

2. Anti-Virus

SoftwaresAnti-virus softwares are designed to ensure that computer system has maximum power against all kinds of malicious codes. Normally, they are effectively fast to handle the virus that have been detected in few seconds. Besides that, their security systems are helpful because they can be updated automatically to ensure that the security systems can be upgraded to against new malicious codes.

3. Hard Drive or External Hard Drive

You can either get another one hard drive to keep certain important or necessary data inside. Another way is that get an external hard drive that available you to take it to anywhere by keeping your own data inside. Normally the hard drive life is about 5 years long. Besides keeping data inside the hard drive manually, basically you can use another application such as Norton Ghost to make a full system backups or folder backups.

The ways to prevention the internet threat:Even though we are having the best Firewall or AntiVirus software are still not a surefire way of filtering what’s coming in on our internet connection, it still helps to have one installed. There are few ways we should remember to protect our personal information:

(1) Do not instantly open e-mail attachments from unknown sender. It is because the e-mails may contains the viruses.
(2) Do not provide any confidential information through e-mail, Instant Messages or Chat Messages because they are not safe.
(3) Always make sure that you know your website’s security. Check if the screen’s address bar changes from “http” into “https”

Discuss how E-commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

Reduce cycle time
Cycle time is a period of time between a customer placing an order and receiving the goods. It can help the company to reduce the cycle time by creating an effective and direct system without wasting any available time. Through e-commerce, the cycle time can be reduced by eliminating the time taken to process in between supplier, intermediaries and customer. The customer can immediately make an order of the material needed no matter in what time zone to access to the internet. For example, Dell and FedEx allow people carry out the businesses without the barriers of time or distance. People can make the transaction within day or night, 24-hours a day or purchase or sell anything one desire at a single click of the mouse. Beside that, cycle time also can be reduced through improvement along the supply chain such as by using Radio Frequency identification (RFID).

Empowerment
E-commerce can improve the employees’ empowerment by grants power to employees in dealing with process of capturing, searching and leveraging business information and also improves employees’ empowerment where provides enabling technologies for the company’s employees. This can help in more flexibility for the employees in conducting their works and improve employee knowledge and effectiveness which can help to reduces contact handle times. This is providing a quick response or feedback to the customers through the internet without any process that need take a long time to be proved. Beside that, the productivity will be improved if the employees are empowered. Nowadays, employees are not strictly under supervision and the workload of manager could be reduced because they do not need to approve all the small decision unless it was important.

Facilitate customer support
Building and maintaining customer relationships is the key to success in e-commerce and, unless service is maintained, customer loss may result, more than offsetting any cost efficiencies due to introducing e-commerce technology. Since the core of e-commerce is information and communications, support for managing customer relationships is available to those who know how to use it.

By allowing customers to track delivery of parcels in real time, the Federal Express website keeps customers in touch with the location of their goods and when they will arrive. Provision of this sort of information creates greater customer satisfaction and sense of control.

Automatic Teller Machines (ATM’s) are now well used by most bank customers, who, although some still express feelings about the lack of personal interaction with bank staff, generally would not want to return to the old system of standing in a queue for personal service. They feel more in control of the transaction process and can access their information any time.


Publishing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) on a website saves customers time and money waiting on the phone for responses. They also allow the business to concentrate on generating more business rather than dealing with often simple issues.

An example of an E-commerce failure and its causes

There are some successful e-commerce companies such as eBay, Google, and Yahoo. However, there have large numbers of e-commerce companies that are not able to maintain their profit through e-commerce. Boo.com is one of the companies which failure in doing the e-commerce business, Boo.com was a United Kingdom company founded by Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, which later flopped after having to liquidate and was placed into receivership in 18 May 2000. Boo.com’s intention is to sell branded fashion apparel over the Internet. There have some reason of the failures; one of the problems was mismanagement, technology and limited space available to display product information to customer.

1) Trying to sell the wrong product online

There have some products that are not appropriate to be sold through online. For the products which are inexpensive and could be easily bought from the local store are not worth selling through using on the internet. Beside the inexpensive products, products such as clothes and shoes which need trying would be difficult to sell because it need people try the products from the local store too.

2) Poor customer service

Online service provides less interaction between the customer and seller. Customer just can find the information which have provide by the website they surf. The information may be limited to enable provide knowledge about the product to the customer, so it can confuse the customer about the product and this poor customer service would send the customers running away. So it need to provide excellent service to satisfy customer needs and wants.

3) A poorly designed website

Poor designed website has a major effect to bring the failure of the e-commerce. Overcrowding can bring the poor customer service, because it can make the customer confuse with the graphics was present. Professional website need to feature the items clearly with the photos and descriptions. Beside that, too much color, flash animation or graphics could slow down the downloading process which brings the poor customer service.

4) Lack of marketing

Marketing of the site is needed for both online and offline. Marketing is the process of interesting potential customers in products and services provided. So marketing is essential to let you know your competitive advantage and to show your customers with the best price that can be offer compare with the others competitors. Beside that, the company should do some surveys and collect information in order to fulfill the customer needs and wants.

An example of an E-commerce success and its causes

There are many success examples of e-commerce website that have been created such as http://www.ebay.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.lelong.com/ , http://www.dell.com/ and so on.

The example of success of E-Commence business i want to highlight here is E-Bay. Ebay is a business that used of E-Commerce to commence its business. It had successful it business by enrolled it in this field with good strategic planning. Hence, it leads to this business to a long term growth.

1. Effectiveness

The key success of Ebay is cause by the Effective which is concerned with “doing the right thing” between Persistent Marketing and Public relationship of the owner. By implement the strategic marketing policies in promoting their products and the cheap price quoted, it attracted a lot of customer to view and purchase their product all the times and indirectly continuous increase their profit.

2. Great customers’ service

Another cause of their success is Ebay give great customers’ services. Ebay maintain continuous concern on their customer and understand customers’ needs. Maintenance and warranty provided for the customer that purchases their goods and found out damages.


3. Useful tools

Ebay provided easy and convenience tools for the users to select their items purchases, simply clicking on the product, the design of the webpage will bring customer to other sites of the products. Users’ friendly webpage allows customers to view on details and explanation on the products before making purchases.

4. Payment process

Not only that’s, another key success of Ebay is based on the safety banking payment process. Ebay business provide safe environment for the users and customer that browsing their webpage and when they making purchase through the internet, this sites making it private and disallow hacking on customer password by other intentional hackers.


In conclusion, E-Commerce services provided by Ebay keeping on success because their reputation and marketing policies in dealing with customer.

The history and evolution of E-commerce

What is mean by E-commerce?

E-commerce is any business related transactions partially or totally carried out by electronic medium especially on internet using Open networks or Closed network.

Evolution of E-commmerce

Year	Event
1960	Electronic Data Interchange ( EDI ) was formulated. EDI is a set of standard instructions to exchange business information and do electronic transaction.
1969	Americas department of defence was developed ARPANET. ARPANET used for researching new reliable network.
1991	Word Wide Web which is developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN started the first Internet transaction. Word Wide Web only supported exchange of data that was in text format.
1992	Mosaic web-browser arrived. Mosaic web-browser was the first ‘point and click’ browser which is developed by Marc Andreessen. It used to interchange text and graphic.
1994	Marc Andreessen successful developed 2nd graphic browser which call Netscape. Microsoft Internet Exployer was come up at the same time.
1998	Digital Subscriber Line (DSL ) provided more faster access. It persistent connection to the internet. The online transaction was increased rapidly at that time.
1996-2000	E-commerce was spread to a significant group by globally within these four years. E-commerce became an important part for the consumers.
2008	US E-commerce and Online Retail retained a success which the sales projected to reach $ 204 billion.

*ouR SecRet GaRden*

Hello everyone, my name is Mei Lian. I come from a historical place which is Malacca. All of my friends know that I love my hometown very much. Actually, this is not the first time I write my blogs. In the past, I used to write the blogs when I feel sad or unhappy. This is one of the ways that I used to relieve my sadness or pressure. I am a person who likes to cook and bake. I think this is because by the influence of my lovely mother. I truly hope that I can always make many delicious foods and share them with everyone. So, I wish to have my own bakery shop in the future. Besides that, I also like to take photo. I like to take down the sweet memories between my friends and me. Well, I will recall all the memories back by reviewing the photos. The most favorites websites that I like to visit are www.wikipedia.com, www.friendster.com, www.facebook.com, www.yahoo.com and www.youtube.com . www.wikipedia.com enables me to search the useful information when doing our assignment. Moreover, some of the websites help me to meet with my ex-classmate and also meet with new friends all over the world. We share our happiness and sadness through Internet. I will upload some of my sweet memories to share with my friends too. In addition, www.yahoo.com provides daily top news for us. Well, www.youtube.com is a website that can relax my mind especially when I am stressful. I can search any movies, dramas and also songs by surfing YouTube.

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Hello everyone …My name is Hui Iee. A girl came from KUANTAN. I am 22 years old. This is my first time to write a blog. I am taking Bachelor Degree of Business Administration Entrepreneurship in University Tunku Abdul Rahman. This is my final year, busiest and hardest spend a lot of time on searching information, discuss with others members. I believe I can do it well with them, whose I work together all the time for previous assignment. My hobbies ayear. Final year project is waiting for me. It needs to re watch Hong Kong dramas and movies, sleeping and window shopping (because still as a student). Everyone can share any movie with me and don’t be shame. Hehe....
Now, I would like to share my favorite websites with you. They are include www.wikipedia.com, www.friendster.com, www.facebook.com, www.yahoo.com, and www.chinesecari.com. Yahoo helps us in getting the latest new and information. It also helps me in searching information that I need. Friendster and Facebook are the website I always use to view my friends’ profiles and their latest status. Also, I won’t forget to leave a comment for them every time I check it.

* Our Sweet memories*