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.