 On The Net - Computing News
with Chris Goh
Fraud Revisited
In the past couple of years online fraud has crept its way, slowly but surely, into the online community. They have ranged from hoaxes such as the free Starbucks voucher, which was spammed, to more devious ones like the recent operahouse.org incident, where a fake site pretended to sell tickets to performances at the Sydney Opera House and the Paris Opera House. Though no transactions were able to take place, credit card numbers were taken. In this instance, the owners of the site managed to convince Yahoo that it was a real site as well and was listed in the portal.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics showed in the last census that the Australian community are still loathed to use Internet for payment of services and such fraud issues will continue to pose threats to the expansion of online transactions.
It is important that when you do start your online transactions that you place close scrutiny to what you're paying and review your credit card thoroughly down to the cent.
Don't undertake any transaction unless the site uses some sort of certification. It is easy to tell: if the web lock appears on your browser and the address starts with https:// instead of http:// then it is a secure transaction.
Also, pay close scrutiny to the dates and times your transactions were done (make necessary alterations for time zones if purchasing overseas).
Avoid websites that do not have a real-time online transaction system, as chances are they do not have a direct online payment gateway with the bank.
Avoid disclosing credit card details in email, and when solicited for your credit card number, either by phone or email, don't. There should be no need for this, even for refunds as banking refunds can be automatically done into an account without any form of confirmation (since it's just returning money from where it was taken).
Play it safe on the net and you'll be fine. Banks are obligated to provide you with a refund should it be identified that fraud is involved. The banking industry itself has noted an increase in digital fraud, but has yet to respond in unison to provide consumers with peace of mind. It's not a hard thing to do, but requires the bank to re-invest in their systems. The economies of scale will one day require banks to respond, but for now, we have to be very diligent with our transactions. If only my bank would use the $5 monthly fee it charges me into something more useful (more than my yearly interest earnings), we could possibly see a better system.
HotNews
Strand Consult, a media company in Liverpool UK is trying an innovative way to stop internal spamming. They have told their staff that Wednesday is a no email day except in the case of dire emergencies. The catalyst had been a staff member who posted to all the staff in the company (30,000+) to enquire whether anyone had any blu-tac.
A new product called Camera/Shy has allowed Chinese activists to avoid the prying eyes of their government. Oxblood and Pull Ruffin have created an encoder that allows messages to be encrypted in conventional GIF files (a digital image format). Only those that know the location of the file and have the decoder can get access to the messages. The irony is that in the land of democracy, the US company NetIQ created software that "will detect and destroy" these files no doubt hoping to sell it to the Chinese government. The Chinese group had released their software as open source and said it doesn't matter as they expect many variants of the application, much like the GNutella engine that sparked the P2P music downloading software.
An Adelaide Company has gained international recognition since its emergence from hiding. During last year more and more websites are being dynamically generated. This means sites are normally generated from databases and are not traditional static HTML. This has caused search engines to either list page content on sites incorrectly or not at all as they crawl through the Web. YourAmigo, the Adelaide Startup has created an application which allows such sites to be seen by all, and also help organisations in indexing and mapping dynamic websites.
In a world of economic gloom, Samsung has beat Microsoft, Intel and IBM in Net Income in the last quarter. It's CEO who boasted not long ago that it aims to be the next Sony has defied predictions with a US$1.65 billion net income in what is a highly competitive market place.
Intel - the largest manufacturer of microprocessors (80 per cent of the market) - is about to lay off 4,000 employees. The last staff cut was in March 2001 when 7,000 employees left the company. This was done to cut costs - further depressing news for the tech industry.
HotSites
- http://dmoz.org
- I often get frustrated with Yahoo because of broken links, but with portal after portal disappearing the choices are diminishing. The Open Directory Project has taken up the Yahoo style but has created an excellent up to date site.
- http://www.idi.org.au
- The Diabetes Institute can provide you with very useful information on diabetes. With a large hidden population of diabetes it is important, even if you don't think you're at risk, to be aware of the facts.
- http://www.justgive.org
- This is a portal for charities around the world. If you want to know what sort of charities are around the world, justgive provides an opportunity to see which organisations need your help. If you feel so inclined online donations are also accepted and, according to the site, 100 per cent of your donations are passed to the charity.
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