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Why credit cards holders go bankrupt? How to prevent?

What is credit cards? Credit card is a plastic card which issued by Bank to the holder with a credit limit to make payment. Nowadays, credit card is a common way to a consumer to make payment. The payment made will become the credit card debts and it also named as consumer debts. The debts will be more while there is interest charge to the card holders. If the card holders do not pay the money back to the bank on time, there will be penalties charge. Therefore, the credit card debts amount will become greater and greater. Once the card holders is unable to pay all the debts back to the bank, then he or she will go for bankruptcy.

In order not to go for bankruptcy, the card holders should not spend more than the amount he or she earn monthly. To prevent the penalties charge, the card holders should pay the credit card debts on time to the bank. The most convenient way for the card holders to pay the debt is using online banking (e.g. http://www.maybank2u.com.my)

Go and get your prepaid cash card...!!

Prepaid cash card is just like a credit card or debit card offered by the various bank. Function of the prepaid cash card also similar as a debit card, it allow customers use it to purchase goods and services by deduct the amount money available in the card. But, how to apply the prepaid cash card from the bank?
First, people may go to the bank’s website or walk in bank to apply the prepaid cash card. He or she need to fill up the form about his personal details like name, address, e-mail address, IC number, phone number and so on. This information provided by the people is kept as a record by the bank for identifying the identity of the customer when he uses the prepaid cash card.
Next, people need to choose the type of prepaid cash card available.
After choosing the prepaid cash card, people have to decide how much he wants to debit to the prepaid cash card before using it. The amount can be spent by the people is limited with the amount he had debit.
The prepaid cash card is easy to use and carry with people shopping at the complex. So, lets apply for one….

Identity Theft

Identity theft means using someone personally identity such as name, phone number, address or credit card number without any authorization to commit fraud.

There are three types of identity theft:
  1. financial identity theft: once they have your personal information, identity theft use it to open new credit card accounts in your name. They will use the card to purchase goods and services without ur acknowledgement.
  2. criminal identity theft: identity theft use the information obtained to commit criminal such as create counterfeit checks by using victim's name and account number.
  3. identity cloning: the identity theft using victim's identity as their own identity to get a job which they unable to get it. Once they got the job, they could get access into forbidden zone which they wish to.

In order to prevent your identity was stolen by the identity theft, the best way to find out is to monitor your account every month. If you able to check your accounts every month, you might able to minimize the financial damange.

While you identify that your identity has been stolen, immediately go to lodge a police report and contact your bank to inform them about the identity theft and ask them to block all the transaction availability. After that, proceed to the nearest branch of the bank and change all the credit card as well as the bank account number.

The threat of online security: various ways hacker hack to get information

Do you know what is hacker and cracker? "Hacker" is recognize as a negative term by most of the people. Actually, "hacker" help create programs and applications or improve computer security. However, anyone using his or her skills maliciously is not a hacker but a cracker. Crackers infiltrate systems and cause mischief or worse. Malicious hackers use programs to:
  1. Hack passwords: Malicious hackers try to hack someone's password from guesses to simple algorithms that generate combination of letters, numbers and symbols. There is another way which named brute force attack which use trial and error method to hack password. In other way, malicious hacker use a dictionary attack to hack password, which means malicious hacker use a program that inserts common words into password fields.
  2. Hacker infect a computer or system with a virus: A computer viruses are programs designed to duplicate themselves and cause problems ranging from crashing a computer to wiping out everything on a system's hard drive. The computer viruses sent out by malicious hacker via email, instant meessages, web sites with downloadable content or peer-to-peer networks to the potential victims.
  3. Log keystrokes: There are some programs allow malicious hackers to review every keystroke a computer user makes. Once the program installed on a victim's computer, the programs record each keystroke, giving the hacker everything he needds to infiltrate a system or even steal someone's identity or information.
  4. Gain backdoor access: Malicious hackers create programs that search for unprotected pathways into network systems and computers. In the early days of the internet, most of the computer systems had limited security and making possible for a malicious hacker to find a pathway into the system without a username and password. Use Trojon horse to infect a computer system is another way that used by malicious hacker to gain backdoor access.
  5. Create zombie computers: A zombie computer, or named bot, is a computer that a hacker can use to send spam or commit distributed denial of service (DDos) attacks. After a victim executes seemingly innocent code, a connection opens between victim's computer and the hacker's system. The malicious hacker can secretly control the victim's computer using it to commit crimes or spread spam.
  6. Spy on e-mail: Malicious hackers have created code that lets them intercept and read e-mail messages. Today, most e-mail programs use encryption formulas as complex that even if a hacker intercepts the message, he won't be able to read it.

Ah.... My data....!!!

What will you do if your personal and financial data has been stolen..? How do you safeguard your data..? Data can be defined with labels such as public, personal, sensitive, confidential, secret, top-secret, or other categories. The more valuable or sensitive the data, the more it needs to be protected. Here are some tips to protect your data.
Firstly, use a strong password or pass-phrase to protect access to data. Secondly, identify and store the personal and financial data in a specific place within network or computer. Never let others know the password and the places store the data or expose it in front of people.
Thirdly, limit the physical access by just allowing the authorized person to access the monitor or devices. Only the person has a access key or password can obtain the confidential information.
Fourthly, limit the network or shared access will allow us limit the risk of both accidental and malicious exposure. Make sure that user give the permission before allow sharing the network and computer.
Fifthly, by using the temporary data storage with save the confidential data in a memory sticks, laptops, or other devices, and remove that data from the device when you have finished. Moreover, must ensure that data has been completely erased and not just deleted.
Lastly, install and maintain anti-virus software and a firewall in computer. User must always keep the software up to date and has more advance security system.

P.H.I.S.H.I.N.G!!

Phishing?? Do you guys know what Phishing is? Phishing is not a new issue and it is a type of scam that has been around for years. Perpetrator will send out a legitimate-looking email in an attempt to ask for personal information such as phone number, password, credit card detail and so on. Well known and trustworthy web sites including eBay, Yahoo, Paypal, Best Buy, online bank are often spoofed by phishers to get the victim. One example of phishing is customer of eBay received an email that required them to re-register themselves by providing credit card data, date of birth and so on. The page looked just like eBay’s homepage and contains all the eBay internal links but did not really belong to eBay. Besides that, Citibank has also been disguise by the phishers to get the important information from the victim. One can visit this website: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/advice/Phishing-email.asp to have a look of the fake website.
How to avoid being hooked by these phishers?
Legitimate businesses and financial institutions would hardly ever ask for personal information via e-mail. If you receive such a request, call the relevant organization using a telephone number that you know to be genuine and ask whether it is true. Besides that, one should check the legitimacy of the web site by open a new internet browser session and type in the company web address by their own rather than click on the link in the message or cut and paste the link from the message as the phishers will lead you to a different website. Hence, look carefully at the URL that led you to a web site. The longer the URL, the easier it is to conceal the true destination address. For instance, web address like
http://www.superstarcompany.com@thisisascam.com actually sends the user to “thisisascam.com” rather than the page of superstarcompany. Furthermore, another ways to masquerade URL include substituting similar-looking characters such as substitute the o with zero, spoofed paypal.com as paypa1.com. In addition, some phishing emails contain software that can harm the user computer or track the activities on the internet without the user knowledge. Anti-virus software, anti-spyware software and firewall can be used to protect the user from inadvertently accepting the unwanted files. Anti-virus scans the incoming files while the firewall helps to make the user invisible on the internet and blocks all file from unauthorized sources. On the other hand, phishing and Malware protection helps to check the website visited by the user against the lists of reporting phishing and malware sites. However, all of this software should be updated frequently in order to work efficiently. Lastly, check for the spelling mistake and bad grammar in the website. It is acceptable for an occasional error slip by any organization but if more than one mistake will be represent as a signal to be aware.
In short, one should learn to be alert and don’t become the fish of the phishers!!

How e-commerce came from...?

After I surf the websites by using Google search engine, I get to know more about the e-commerce. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a growing aspect of the business community. This formally is the use of digital transactions between and among businesses and individuals. Actually e-commerce is developed from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI is a set of standards developed in the 1960’s to exchange business information and do electronic transactions. But in 1992 when the Mosaic web-browser was made available, it was the first ‘point and click’ browser.
A major merger, in early 2000, between America Online (AOL) and Time Warner was another major push for electronic commerce. The merger, worth $350 million, brought together a major online company with a traditional company. Up to 2006, it is believed that companies in general will take mixed strategy of having stores online and offline in order to be successful. It can be seen that there will be a large growth in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce, which online businesses is selling to individuals. However, even though B2C electronic commerce may be the most recognizable there are different varieties.
Today the largest electronic commerce is Business-to-Business (B2B). Businesses involved in B2B sell their goods to other businesses. Other varieties growing today include Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) where consumers sell to each other, for example through auction sites. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is another form of e-commerce that allows users to share resources and files directly.
Nowadays, there is a new term called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.

Why Webvan.com fail as an online Retailer??



Webvan was an online grocery market which was founded by Louis Borders in the late 1990s. It sold groceries such as bread, vegetable and so on. It tried to embrace a total customer satisfaction by delivering products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing regardless of day or night. At first, Webvan hoped to expand his business to 26 cities. However, it only offered service in ten U.S. markets at its peak including San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Sacramento, and Orange County. In 2001, Webvan went bankrupt. Why?
According to some of the journalist, the main reason that causes the failure of Webvan is lack of management experience of the executives or investor in the supermarket industry. Webvan’s investor included Goldman Sachs and Yahoo! and the CEO,
George Shaheen had made the wrong judgement on implementing the strategy. They also fail to pay attention to the storefront aspects of business which is commonly left out by most of the online retailer. Quality customer service, inventory management, efficiency in shipping and delivery are also important in generating the profit. Webvan want to expand as fast as possible to various regions around the United States but it also suffered a lot of problems. One of the problems is logistical problem such as equipment breakdown in its warehouses and traffic jams that delayed deliveries. The unexpectedly high cost incurred had affected the profitability of the Webvan’s business. In addition, Webvan spent a lot of money in rapidly build the infrastructure when it is popular. According to the report of Webvan’s company, the average daily expense was $1.8 million which was nearly four times its average daily sales of $ 489,000. Webvan’s investments were much more than its profits which made it difficult to break-even and the company eventually ran out of money. Two years after it was launching, Webvan decided to fire it employees and file for bankcruptcy. In a nutshell, Webvan was being listed as the highest dot.com flop in the history of online grocery.

Revenue Model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay

Google
Google main income is providing marketing services. Its principal products and service are "Google AdWords" and "Google AdSense". "Google AdWords" is a pay per click advertising program. Google is allow the advertisers to put their advertisements to the user through Google search engine while the user is looking for information which related to the advertisers offered. The advertisement will shown as "sponsored link" on the right side of the screen or above the main search results. "Google AdSense" is an advertisement serving program to enable website owners to enroll in the program with text, image and video advertisements on their sites. The revenue will be generated on a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis.



Amazon.com



Amazon.com, is operating the retail Web sites, as well as provides programs that enable third parties to sell their products on its Web sites internationally. Amazon.com major income is from its books selling and also the transaction fees paid by their customer.



eBay major income is from sales. It is selling various type of products and earn lots of money. eBay's other revenue model is transactions fees by acquired PayPal which created the most advanced proprietary fraud prevention system to create a safe payment solution. eBay also acquired Skype, which is the the world's fastest-growing Internet communication company. It allows people using it online with the software to make free voice or video call unlimited. It generate revenue through its premium user who subscript to make voice or video call to a cell phone.

Successful E-commerce Website!!



It is not longer a new phenomenon to conduct the business through internet. One of the best examples is Amazon.com. This company is started in July 1995 by Jeff Bezos in Seattle. Amazon.com sells only on-line and is essentially an information broker. It has expanded rapidly and has a huge database of loyal customers in more than 160 countries. Furthermore, it is the biggest on-line international retail store in the world. But, do you know what are the strategic used or factor that contribute to the success of Amazon.com???

In Amazon.com, customer can find anything they want to buy online at a competitive rate as it has the biggest selection of products in the world such as millions of books, CDs, DVDs, Games, kitchenware, computers and so on. To achieve it, Amazon has aligned itself with many different companies and effective partnerships have been proven to greatly enhance a business. Besides that, convenience and ease of use is also one of the key elements that lead to the success of Amazon.com. It guild and direct a visitor through the site by giving instructions and explaining the search functionality. This is important as purchasing goods online has eliminate the human interaction with a sales clerk, sales representative and others which will usually take place during a face to face transaction. However, it has been substitute by providing purchase suggestions, personalizes special offers or web sites. To ensure customer safety and satisfaction, Amazon has instilled two company policies throughout the organization. These policies concern privacy and product returns. All the information given by the customer are protected on the website using various method such as firewalls, fail-safe technology and so on. For the return policy, customer can return an item within 30 days of the receipt of the order for a full refund. Amazon.com will basically take any of their merchandise back and always gives the customer the benefit of the doubt. In addition, Sales promotion like giving coupons, special offer and discounts also attract a lot of user to its website. In a nutshell, the world is not static in its expectation of a company’s online presence. Amazon has worked very hard to improve and keep up with the change in expectations. Again, that is why Amazon.com is one of the most popular home-shopping sites today.

Who am I?

Who am I? This is a very serious and important question. I am the most handsome guy in my family. Why? This is because all my family members are girl. (Except my father and little brother) My name is Chun Yan, now study in University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Sungai Long Campus. Playing computer games, studying (non fiction and non academic), listening for music (romantic and love song) are my lovely activities. The top 5 websites I most visit are www.friendster.com, www.hotmail.com, www.yahoo.com, www.pbebank.com, and www.amway2u.com. Normally, I surf friendster website to get to know about the friends’ news. My secondary and university friends will pose and upload their latest news and photos to share with others. Besides that, I use hotmail and yahoo to check my e-mail and use public bank e-banking service to settle the bills, tuition fees and make payment. Lastly, the most websites I visited among top 5 websites is Amway website. Why…? It is because that is my company’s website. Usually I order product, check the business volume; get to know about the Amway latest news through the websites. If you want to make your life better, come to join us.

About Me

My name is Siah Poh Geok. I am from group 4. My email address is baoyi_gal@hotmail.com. My first time is giving to our E-Commerce's lecturer --"Mr Hen". But, don't misunderstanding.. i mean writing a blog la..haha..I come from Muar, Johor, a place that has a lot of delicious food such as Otak-Otak and homemade food from my mum which i cant find in KL. My hobbies is reading, playing games, swimming and watching movie. The movie that i have watched recently are 原来爱上贼, gossip girl, prison break and so on..but, more and more homework and assignment (one of them is what i am doing now!!hehe) need to do..haiz..i cant watch my favourite movie d...The top 5 websites that i visited most are http://www.hotmail.com/ (to check my mail), http://www.yahoo.com/ and http://www.google.com/ (to find information for my assignment), http://www.baidu.com/ and http://www.gougou.com/ (to download song which our lecturer says is illegal but he himself is also part of it when he copy from other people "indirectly illegal" hehe).
i think i should end my first blog now...or else my "assignment mark" will be very low(after Mr. Hen read my blog)..hehe..anyone want to know more about me can add me and chat with me...To be continued.........

Introduce myself

This blog that I created purposely is for my e-commerce assignment in UTAR. First of all, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Lee Seng Hong, I am now studying in UTAR which is in year 3 semester 1 with taking bachelor in commerce, Accounting. Here is my e-mail address: leesenghong@gmail.com. What I like is to play computer games. Due to this hobby, I do like to develope my computer system, and from this development, I learn much more about the computer hardware work. I always visit http://www.hardwarezone.com.my to monitor the price and read out the articles of the computer hardwares which is available in Malaysia. Other than that, I like to play badminton. I am keeping look for friends who interested as well to go and play together.
When I online at my home, I always log in into my e-mail account to check my e-mail daily. I had use hotmail, yahoo! and google mail (gmail), i find that gmail is the best e-mail(http://www.gmail.com). The reason is the loading of the e-mail is very fast and it is friendly using. It is not like hotmail which is much more slower when you are using the live beta version. The size space of gmail is keeping increasing secondly, so that you will not the size problem for your e-mail. However, yahoo! have much more advantage about the size space of the email which is unlimited. While, I also registered my msn massenger passport account with my gmail account. Moreover, google also provide mapping services to me. When I want to go to somewhere area which I totally do not know, google earth will help me alot with finding the exact location. Other than that, when I need information for my course assignment, I can easily get those information from the search engine from http://www.google.com.
Here is another website that I visit frequently, http://www.howstuffworks.com. This website teach you how the stuff works. The stuff include computers, electronic, automobile, business & money, communication, entertainment and etc. This is the best website compare the others that I visited. Do you heard about online banking? I would like to introduce http://www.maybank2u.com.my to you all. It is a website that you can make online transaction but you need to have a saving accounts or current accounts in Maybank Bhd. to use this kind of services.