Credit Card debts: Causes and Prevention

Nowadays, the credit card almost becomes a necessity in this world. People can hold more than credit card easily, it seems can be either very useful or harmful. It really depends on how you use it. Once you failed to utilize it, you may incur in a huge problem with credit card debt.

There are several causes that will lead to indebted.
1. The cardholders apply too many credit cards at the same time. They may not be able to afford a large expense, since their expense may be greater than income.
2. People seem to be using their credit cards to make everyday purchases like groceries. Although it might seem benign, these items help build debt.
3. Wrong perception. The cardholders may have wrong perception that they should fully utilize their offer from credit card institution. Therefore, they might over spending their future money and end up a huge debt.
4. Keep on using new credit card to cover another credit card debt, some people may using this way to pay their debts, it will cause them facing serious financial problem and might getting bankruptcy.



Ways to prevent credit card debt.
1. Don’t apply any credit card. This is the most basic way to prevent any debts from it.
2. Altogether stop using multiple credit cards. If you continue to use the credit cards, the amount of debts will increase, making it difficult for you to pay off. Instead prefer to use your debit card to sustain your needs.
3. Preparing a monthly budget and cutting down expenses on unwanted needs will help you save a considerable amount of money. The money save can be used to removed the debts.

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers' adoption strategies.

Recently, there shown an increasing number of users who start using the mobile payment system in Malaysia. The well-known mobile payment system in Malaysia is Mobile Money (MM wallet), which provides the services via mobile phone. The MM wallet is use by the young person and even the old person. The users can registered at MM wallet in order to make payment via sms by using only a mobile phone coupled with a 6-digit security PIN. The users can make the payment like loan, telephone bills and others at anytime via mobile phone.

This system bring a lot of benefits to the users, the users can avoid crowded in the queue for the long time. The users can also in the convenient because they do not need to bring their credit card or cash along if their want to go ahead for some of the transaction. The users can secure their mmwallet account by create the strong password protection patent.

The most common usage of the mobile payment in Malaysia is use to pay the summons. However, the others may use the mobile payment system to pay their debts such as monthly credit card bills, electric bills, phone bills and others. The easy steps in register the account is the main reason for them using the MM wallet. The users just need to register their phone number and create their password for start using the MM wallet. http://www.mobile-money.com/

In the future, there will be more merchants adopt the mobile money system in order to convenient the consumers since the technology become more and more advances nowadays.

http://www.mmwallet.com/userfaq.htm

http://www.mmwallet.com/download/pocketGuide_eng.pdf

Electronic Currency

Electronic currency is also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic money, digital money, digital cash or digital currency. It is refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value system. Bit Pass, Payloadz, Digicash, Peppercoin are some examples of electronic currency. While electronic money has been an interesting problem for cryptography to date, use of digital cash has been relatively low-scale.

Peppercoin, Inc. was a privately held company founded in late 2001 by Silvio Micali and Ron Rivest, it was a company that offers services based on the peppercoin method. Peppercoin is a crytographic system for processing micropayments which is especially important to companies with low-priced digital content or physical goods. The core idea of Peppercoin system is to bill one randomly selected transaction a lump sum of money rather than bill each transaction a small amount. It uses "universal aggregation", typically means that it aggregates transactions over users, merchants as well as payment service providers. The random selection is cryptographically secure, means it cannot be influenced by any of the parties. It is claimed to reduce the transaction cost per dollar from 27 cents to "well below 10 cents."

Peppercoin, Inc. was bought out in 2007 by Chockstone, a provider of stored value loyalty services to merchants, for an undisclosed amount. The company's PCI-compliant services are now used by restaurant brands to tie customer loyalty programs to credit and debit cards at the point of sale. Peppercoin provides merchants with secure access to their customers' payments data so they can increase the effectiveness of loyalty schemes. Merchants using the system are also provided with real-time reporting and customer analytics tools to develop offers based on business needs and consumer response.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_money

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercoin

The Application of Pre-Paid Cash Card for Consumers

A pre-paid cash card commonly referred to as a stored-value card, is typically a credit card- sized piece of plastic that contains or represents an amount of pre-loaded value.Basically, it's a card you can load money on and use anywhere including online.

For example, the Touch-n-Go smart card which is used by Malaysian toll expressway and highway operators as the sole electronic payment system(EPS).The Touch-n-Go systems are designed to process up to 800 vehicles per hour to ease the queue congestion at the toll plaza.It is the same technology used as electronic payment of transport for London which is known as Oyster card.Before long,Tounch-n-Go can use in anywhere such as 7-Eleven, KFC,Mc Donald,etc.The another example for the application of Pre-paid cash card for the consumers including gift cards,prepaid telephone cards, payroll cards, government benefit cards, mall cards, etc.

There are numerous benefits to the pre-paid cash card. These include:

Availability - There are no credit checks, which means you can get a card without worrying about your credit history.

Control - Prepaid cash cards are an ideal way to budget for yourself.Like a credit card you get a full breakdown of spending on the card so you can see what has been purchased, who from and when.

No debt risk - With a prepaid card there is no chance of spending too much as you are limited to the amount you put on your card.

The card for travel - As well as being able to top up the card, depending on the

specific provider, you will be able to use it at ATMs worldwide. Many providers now offer dollar and euro cards and offer a better exchange rate on their travel cards.

Security- If you are still uncomfortable giving the numbers of the card on the internet, the prepaid cash card is the answer. Since the card can be charged only up to the value of the pre-loaded fund, the thieves can not make an excessive charge using your card.

Phishing: Examples and its prevention

Phishing is THEFT, which is the technique use to steal the personal identity and financial credentials such as credit card number, username or passwords. The process is using the combination of social engineering and technical subterfuge to gain the personal information for illegal purposes via e-mail and instant messages.

The more recent phishing is targeted on the e-bank user, online payment services and e-mail. The phishing will be send the messages or e-mail to the particular person that the consequences of if they fail to update their personal information or account immediately then their account will be in suspension. The Paypal, eBay and bank users will be the victims of phishing. The damages cause by the phishing is that the victims may incur the financial loss due to denial of access to the email.

There are three methods use to prevent the phishing such are block the site access, prevent spam entry and no cost phishing prevention. Block site access is the filtering and firewall prevents inbound and outbound traffic to site like spyware that can be preventing from phishing attacks.The Anti-Spam software can be use to analyses the mail contents and denial the delete the phishing mail. This type of software may stop most of the pubshing mail by spam filtering before it reaches to the users.The latest anti-phishing is that besides entry the passwords the user is require to choose the images or features to have the mutual authentication. Some of the cases in bank industry in US proved that this method is useful to prevent phishing.

http://www.antiphishing.org/

http://www.ist-world.org/ProjectDetails.aspx?ProjectId=6924851b2ac94190bd63a5e4d0a28d18&SourceDatabaseId=7cf

The Application of 3rd Party Certification Programme in Malaysia

VeriSign is the trusted provider of an Internet infrastructure services for the digital world. Billions of times each day, companies and consumers rely on Internet infrastructure to communicate and conduct commerce with confidence.VeriSign offerings include SSL, SSL Certificates, identity protection, managed network security,etc.

VeriSign can help your company establish or improve customer trust by securing your Website for business. VeriSign offers the strongest security in the industry by securing information exchange between Web servers and clients, from server to server, and even among other networking devices such as server load balancers or SSL accelerators. VeriSign solutions can provide complete cross network security by protecting servers facing both the Internet and private intranet.

MSC Trustgate is the qualified licensed CA (Certification Authority) in Malaysia under the Digital Signature Act 1997 .The objectives of MSC Trustgate is to become leading provider of Internet Security and complement the aspiration of MSC into being a world class e-environment.

MSC Trustgate provides security solutions and online trust services to over 800 companies and organizations in the region to help build a secure network and application infrastructure for their electronic transactions and communications. The company's clientele include major banks, telecommunication companies and governments.

For example, Trustgate provides the services of MyKad PKI (My Key) .Malaysian government has put in place a smart National Identity Card (“MyKad”) for every citizen. MyKad with PKI capability allows its holder to conduct online transaction with government agencies and private sectors.MyKey, is the MyKad PKI solution that works with your physically MyKad, allowing you to authenticate yourself online and to digitally sign documents or transactions and is accepted by the Malaysian government.

http://www.msctrustgate.com/product/mykad_id.htm

How to Safeguard our personal and financial data?

As we know that data can be classified into few categories, such as personal, public, confidential, top-secret or other categories. The more sensitive the data, the more it needs to be protected. To avoid the important personal and financial data being stolen, the ways should be taken to safeguard our important data as at the following.

To ensure that we don’t fall prey to cyber fraud, we must set a password to protect our access, and such password must be long enough of numbers or letters and unique, so that it cannot be guessed by outsider and get access to the data.

Encryption key is the process of transforming information (plaintext) using an algorithm (cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge referred to as a key. It is similar to password and this can help prevent unintended disclosure even if the system has been compromised.

Beside that, we can install and update anti-virus programs and a firewall, to protect ourselves against Viruses and Trojan horses that may steal or modify the important data. Use legitimate anti-spyware program to scan the computer and remove any of spyware which hidden in software programs that affect the computer performance and give attackers to access to our data. In addition, to safeguard our top secret and sensitive information, we should use biometric system that identify a person by measurement of a biological characteristic, such as fingerprints, iris scanning, facial features or voice, all this scanning can be ensure that no unauthorized users to be access into our data or whatsoever.

Reference:
1. Six Ways to Safeguard Your Online Assets. (November, 2007).
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/103893/Six-Ways-to-Safeguard-Your-Online-Assets
2. Safeguarding Your Data. (March,2007).
http://www.msisac.org/awareness/news/2007-03.cfm

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

Online security is important to anyone who uses the Internet; the related issues are complex and dynamic. Every unprotected online computer can be affected with the viruses, malware, adware, hackers’ attacks and Trojans. Web-based services, including social networks MySpace and Facebook, are becoming prime targets for hackers seeking your personal information.There are many security risks on internet that can lead you to serious financial loss, information theft and the attack on your computer.

As internet users display more of their personal information on social networking Web sites, and office workers upload more sensitive data to online software programs, computer hackers are employing increasingly sophisticated methods to pry that information loose. In many cases, they're devising small attacks that can fly under the radar of traditional security software, while exploiting the trust users place in popular business and consumer Web sites.

Furthermore, the names and contact information for tens of thousands of customers of Automatic Data Processing and SunTrust Banks were stolen from Salesforce.com, which provides online customer management software for those two companies. The incident occurred after a hacker tricked a sales force employee into disclosing a password.

The best way to overcome those problems is to use one of the many antivirus, antispyware, and firewall programs on the market; beside that also make that no anyone will ask for your password, account number, or other log-in information via e-mail or instant message.

References:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302418.aspx

http://www.onlinesecurityauthority.com/

How E-Commerce can reduce cycle time,improve employees'empowerment and facilitate customer support

E-Commerce is a type of business model, or segment of a larger business model, that enables a firm or individual to conduct business over an electronic network, typically the internet. Electronic commerce operates in all four of the major market segments: business to business, business to consumer, consumer to consumer and consumer to business. There have some advantages by using E-Commerce which will discuss below.

http://www.digitsmith.com/ecommerce-definition.html

Cycle time is the amount of time between a customer placing an order when they are needed and receiving the goods. Reducing cycle times means that shorten the time it take for a business to complete the productive activity from the beginning until the end. It can increase competitive advantage, decrease costs, and increase revenue. E-Commerce reducing the cycle time by eliminating an intermediaries between sellers and buyers because they attempt to sell directly to customers. Besides that, online store operates at 24 hours so the customers are given the opportunity to browse,shop and do their transaction in any time. In addition,customers can receive relevant and detailed information in seconds, rather than days or weeks. For example, Dell has plans to open manufacturing facilities in emerging markets such as Brazil, India and central Europe on September, 2007 in order to get closer to customers and reduce cycle time.

E-Commerce also improve employees'empowerment by enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. For example, customers are able to view your online shop (your website) and then they will choose exactly what type product they want, so the employees are responsible to deal with the customers without need to get permission from their employer. This is because employees can make their own decicions, thus this will increase the productivity. Moreover, E-Commerce also providing employees with greater and easier access to information provided by the employer. With the intranet, employees can be able to access the company's database to know the latest activity.

E-Commerce facilitates customer support by providing a wide range of technological solutions and communication opportunities. Additionally, E-Commerce supports self-help customer service so consumers can answer their own questions.Besides that,consumers also can send their inquiry for some products and services by email to enable them to get the detailed information.On the other hand,E-Commerce provides customers with more choices and frequently provides customers with less expensive products and services by allowing them to shop in many places and conduct quick comparison.

History and Evolution of E-commerce

In the early century, our earth is without any form and it is void. Began in 1970s, the applications of E-commerce was developed with innovations. E-commerce was changed the traditional form of "buy and sell" in the market. The organization can be routed electronically from one to another;however, these services were only provided to some of the large organization.The found of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is use to transfer the information and documents. Since the EDI occurred, another form of e-commerce application was followed in the market such as, interorganizational system (IOS).

Furthermore, the e-commerce was started in 1991 while it available for commercial use when most of the user begin searching and participating in the World Wide Web (www). In the year 1999, the internet is emphasis of e-commerce from B2C to B2B however it was changed in 2001 from B2B to B2E. There were found a lot of new learning like e-commerce, e-government, and e-learning necessary for public. The most famous companies which applied e-commerce are Amazon.com,Inc and Ebay. The consumer can buy and sell their products via internet. Meanwhile, there were also having a lot of failure companies using e-commerce for example, Webvan.com, eToys, Xpeditor and others.

http://www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html

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

Kozmo.com

Kozmo.com, an online store and delivery service, promised fast, friendly delivery of almost anything, from movies to snack food, such as a DVD rental, a bag of groceries, or just a single pack of gum and even a candy bar. It was a great idea that you could order a wide variety of products, and snack foods were undoubtedly their top seller. Kozmo.com was very convenient and it refused to charge delivery fees. It was founded by young investment bankers Joseph Park and Yong Kang in March 1998 in New York City. The Company had a business model that promised to deliver small goods free of charge, by using bicycle messengers. The company boasted “from the Internet to your door in under an hour” and its attractive rates helped rapidly draw thousands of customers.

Even though the company raised more then $250 million, but it was unable to generate enough revenue to cover the costs. In 1999, the company had revenue of $3.5 million , with a resulting net loss of $26.4 million. It also entered a five-year co-marketing agreement with Starbucks in February 2000, and it agreed to pay Starburks $150 million to promote its services inside the company’s coffee shops. However, Kozmo.com ended its deal in March 2001 after paying out $15 million.

The main problems that Kozmo faced which included offering one-hour point-to-point delivery of small goods is extremely expensive, since it was free of delivery charge and it was impossible to turn a profit. The greatest error that Kozmo made with their customers was when they stopped catering to their main client base of middle class college-student, in order to target more upscale clients who would order expensive goods. No matter how the company put effort to boost orders and stop the delivery losses, still didn’t stop it from shutting down in April 2001 and laying off its staff of 1,100 employees.

The cost of the small-time deliveries contributed to the demise of this great idea.

An example of an E-commerce success and its causes

Amazon is the largest online shopping site and one of the most widely known e-commerce sites on the Web. It is founded by Jeff Bezos since July 1995. Amazon operates in four international Wed Sides, which include www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de and www.amazon.co.jp. Furthermore, it also operates the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web's comprehensive and authoritative source of information on more than 250,000 movies and entertainment titles and 1 million cast and crew members dating from the birth of firm in 1891 to the present.

Today Amazon offers "Earth's Biggest Selection" of nearly everything. It has 35 million customers and lists millions of unique items in categories such as electronics, kitchen and house wares, books, music, DVDs, videos, photography equipment, toys, software, computer and video games, tools and hardware, outdoor living and wireless product.

The main reason that Amazon success is that it strong focuses on customer experience, which is infused throughout all levels of the company and includes all aspects of the buying process. In addition, Amazon.com can let all retailers sell goods remotely by internet, phone or mail order, credit card.

Amazon established separate website at different country, for example, China, Japan, Canada and so on. It provides global shipping and help increase in the profit.

References:

1. http://www.sas.com/success/amazon_personalization.html

2. http://www.truthout.org/article/the-success-amazon-welfare-we-should-know-it

Self-introduction- FUi SiAN

I am Wong Fui Sian, some friends call me Shanice, 21 years old, and my birthday is on 12/12/1987. I am BAC student in UTAR, from group 3, year 3 semesters 1. I am shy and quite when facing stranger, but active and noisy when stay with my friends.

An animal I like most is dolphin, because it is very cute, in contrast, an animal that I hate most is cat, because it is very dirty and ugly. My hobbies are shopping, watch movie and so on. My hometown is Terengganu but now I am living in Bandar Sungai Long, Scotpine Condominium. Furthermore, my hometown is well-known with oil farm, but it is due to pollution. Besides that, there have many islands in my hometown, like Kapas Island, Redang Island, Lang Tengah Island, Perhentian Island, and so on. Those beauty of the island was attracted many foreigner visitors every year.

The top five website that I often visit are Friendster, Youtube, Msn, Google, and Hotmail. The purpose that I use Friendster is to know more my friends’ reason situation and know more new friends from different country. However, I used Youtube to enrich my life, because it provides many funny joke videos. In addition, I use Msn and Hotmail to check and send my mail to all my friends and also chat with my friends in the different country. Lastly, Google provide me more information that I need to complete my work.

1. http://www.friendster.com/
2. http://youtube.com/
3. http://www.msn.com/?vv=600
4. http://www.google.com
5. http://www.hotmail.com

Self-introduction- BeE YaN

Hi,everybody...I am Bee Yan from Group 3, Year 3 Sem 1,BAC student. I am 22 years old. My date of birthday on 11 June 1986, I born in Klang, Selangor. An animal I like is pig because it is very cute. I am active person so I always like to make a joke with friends. So, my friends have created nickname to me is called "happy girl". My hometown is Jenjarom ,Selangor but now I living in Bandar Sg.long ,Scotpine Condominium. The latest tourism place in my hometown is Gold Coast Beach Resort near Sepang. The well-known food in there is satay and seafood that attracted many foreigner visitor to have a test. Besides that, the scene in there very attractive so the foreigner like to enjoy sunbathe in there. My hobbies are shopping,watching movie, listening music and reading.

The top 5 watebsites that I always visited are google,yahoo,forum,frienster and hotmail. I always search the information to complete my assignment in google. The purpose that I visited hotmail and yahoo is to check my mails and know the latest news. Sometimes, I will go to forum to download some drama and latest new song, because the speed of downloading through the forum is very fast and updated. Furthemore, I also go to friendster to know handsome boy and pretty girl from different country. Besides that, I also like to view their photo and blog in Frienster because this can let me know their appearance and recently condition.

1. www.google.com

2. www.friendster.com

3. www.tom365.com

4. www.yahoo.com

5. www.hotmail.com

Self-introduction- LiLiAn

My name is Yiew Li Ning, Lilian. I am 21 years old, and my birthday is on 4 December, my horoscope is sagittarius. I come from Sabah, Sandakan, it also called ''The Natural City''. The most well known animal in my hometown is Orang Utan, one place you are guaranteed of seing them is at Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, it is the world's largest orang utan (man of the forest) sanctuary, once you visit Sabah, you must visit these famous scenic spot. My hometown also well known of seafood. I am UTAR, BAC student, from group 3. I have know my best friends since year one semester one, they are Ying Ying, Bee Yan, Enkhee and Fui Sian. Due to our good relationship, all my friends have created a nickname to us, called 'Five Flower'. My hobbies are shopping, watching movie, online, reading, sleeping, and so on.

The top five website I often visit are Friendster, MSN, Yahoo, Youtube and Amway2u. The purposes that I visit these websites are to get to know more friends in Friendster and to see my friends' recent situation through their blogs or photos. Increase my knowledges by reading forwarded mails using Hotmail and Yahoo and keep contact with friends by sending mails. To bright up my days by watching funny clips in Youtube. Amway2u is a website that I visit daily because there are lots of interesting health and beauty products. Furthermore, it gave us a business opportunity with no risk and provides many information about health, skin care, home care and other aspect.

Top 5 website that I visited the most:

1. http://www.friendster.com/

2. http://www.amway2u.com/mall_main.jsp

3. http://www.yahoo.com/

4. http://www.msn.com/?vv=600

5. http://youtube.com/

Self-introduction-YinG YinG

I am Low Ying Ying year 3 semesters 1 from group 3 of BAC, 22 years old. I am birth in Klang at the April day of 1986 therefore I have a characteristic of Taurus that hardworking, shy and quite. My hobbies are reading, listen music, watch movie and sleep. The animal I like most is the rabbit because it does not make any noise and clean. My hometown is one of the famous villages in Selangor, which is Jenjarom. There have a giant temple –FGS Dong Chan in my hometown, every year that was attracted a few thousand of Buddhist from different state to visit especially during the Chinese New Year. Besides that, my hometown is well-know with the delicious foods like “Bah Kut Teh”, various types of steamboat, seafood, “pan mee”, and others.

The top five website that I often visit are Google, Msn , Yahoo, Youtube and Friendster . I used the Google net to search for the information and journal to complete all my assignment for particular semester. In addition, the Msn and Yahoo were used to check and send mail to my friends; however, I will use the msn to chat with my friends in different location around the world. These website bring a lot of benefits to me especially save my money to contact all the friends and family members. Lastly, Youtube and Friendster provided various entertainments for me. I will get the latest movies and funny joke videos from Youtube. I will know the new friends and know the ex-friends latest conditions from their uploaded pictures, messages and testimonials from Frienster.