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

Internet auction fraud is a growing epidemic worldwide, as online shopping has grown significantly every year that online shopping has been available. 51,000 cases of internet fraud cases were reported in 2002. In 2006, that number ballooned to 97,000. The numbers are staggering, but everyone can lower their risk by knowing what auction fraud is, how to detect it, and how to prevent falling for it.

However, e-auctions have several limitations such as limited aprticipation,lack of security, fraud or limited software solutions that can support the dynamis commerce. These may because of the buyers cannot see the items, so they may get a defective product. Most internet 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.

Below are some tips take note to prevent e-auciton fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction:

i) Become familiar with the auction website. Look into the websites protection policies. Never assume you are protected from auction fraud.

ii) Before placing a bid, learn as much as you can about the seller. If you can't find anything out about the seller, than avoid doing business with them. Never fall for promises of better deals by moving away from the original auction website.

iii) If the seller wants you to use an escrow service you've never heard of, look into it. Check out the website. Call up customer support. Contact them to digg up data on the business in question. If you can't confirm the legitimacy, don't use it.

iv) Never ever give out your social security number, drivers license number, credit card number, or bank account information until you have thoroughly checked out the seller and the escrow service.

v) Always save 100% of the transaction information. You'll be glad you did in the event your case makes it to court.

vi) If after the sale you feel the item/payment should have been delivered already, try to work it out with the seller/buyer. If at that point you feel that fraud is involved, immediately contact your state attorney general's office.

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

In this century, millions of people are expected to own mobile phones. A mobile payment or m-payment may be defined is as any payment where a mobile device is used to initiate, authorize and confirm an exchange of financial value in return for goods and services. Mobile devices may include mobile phones, PDAs, wireless tablets and any other device that connect to mobile telecommunication network and make it possible for payments to be made.

There have two primary models for mobile payment: Premium SMS based transactional payments and Mobile web payment (WAP). Mobile payment can be used to pay any number fees of digital or physical goods, such as videos, ringtones, games, wallpapers, books, magazines, tickets and other goods. There are a few different purpose uses by the consumers. The most common one is that they use it to pay their credit card bills, telephone bills and so on. They just have to activate their telephones by logging into websites. After registering their mobile telephone numbers, they can enjoy the services. Mobile payment service is developing fast recently in Malaysia. It will work best in those areas where it can emphasize the core virtue of mobile networks-convenience.

The potential of mobile payment systems is that it is easy and convenient for mobile users to make payment through mobile devices. This will help to save their time to go from one place to another place. Other than that, it is very simple to use. They can make their payments by registering their mobile phone numbers. This means that user do not have to go thru sophisticated steps. This will ease those users who are not well educated.

Review a local e-commerce site

Lelong.com is an online store doing selling and buying transaction. A mean of identifying Lelong.com.my is to use an international comparison that everyone is familiar with. Styled and functioning similar to the international auction site, eBay.com, Lelong.com.my powers a robust and secure avenue for trading in Malaysia. The idea of an auction site in Malaysia has taken off with tremendous response. With a local flavour, members feel a sense of belonging and constantly keep in contact with the Lelong Development Team to give feedback, be it positive or negative. Starting based on Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) transactions, Lelong.com.my is now moving to becoming a channel for Business-to-Consumer (B2C) relationships. Many distributors have realised the power of using the auction system and are now using our site to trade and grow their business.

The website use white color as the background color caused the pictures of the product looks clearly and attractive. The font of the word is around 8, it is too small and inconvenience for some users. However, the website is user friendly because user can search the desired product through categories such as beauty&health, car&transport, clothing&accessories etc. There are also a lot of links that may help the users link to the home page, online order ways, payment method, and contact supplier easily.

Lelong.com provides detailed information about their products, display pictures, regular price, online order price, number of order unit, shopping cart etc. Function of request a quote for the consumer who cannot find the product they wish to find also available at the website, so consumer can describe the product they wish to buy to them. At the bottom of the website, there have an e-mail address for enquiries. So have a look at this popular local e-commerce website now, you may figure out your desired products through this site.

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

The Electronic Government initiative was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It will improve how the government operates internally, as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. At the same time, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.

To accelerate the objectives of Malaysia Vision 2020, a path has already been defined through seven innovative Flagship Applications such as Electronic Government, Multipurpose Card, Smart School, Telehealth, R&D Cluster, E-business, and Technopreneur Development.
The vision of Electronic Government is a vision for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens. The vision focuses on effectively and efficiently delivering services from the government to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

The implementation of Malaysia E-Government project in progress:
1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)

2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)

4. Electronic Procurement (EP)

5. Electronic Services (E-Services)

6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

7. E-Syariah

The implementation of e-government would bring benefits to the public administration and Malaysian society in several ways:

i) First, e-government improves efficiency since the use of information technology enables improvement in mass processing tasks and public administration operations.

ii) Second, e-government improves services, as the main element in reforming government operations is to adopt a customer-focused approach. These applications will provide a seamless online service and thus improve traditional government services.

iii) Next, e-government would help to achieve specific outcome. The Internet can help stakeholders share information and ideas and contribute to specific policy outcomes.

Citizen's adoption strategies:

In Malaysia, the internal processes for human resources, procurement and funding rank second in the hierarchy of challenges. The main challenge in e-government in Malaysia is the technological challenge, which includes issues like standards, data integration, legacy maintenance and privacy and security. The key priority in Malaysia now is to improve the core government applications and integrating more services across agencies. At the same time, market the e-government services to the public and businesses.
In order to make the right decisions and avoid falling behind, government must identify and resolve the different issues that have arisen from the transition period during which traditional and e-government co-exist.

Corporate Blogging: New marketing communication tool for companies.

How corporate blog does help the organizations? How can we benefit from promoting corporate blogging within our company?

Corporate blog: an official blog from a company, which signals that the blog is an official communications channel for the company.

Corporate blogging can help organization feel more human to the world and it is a way for company to become intertwined with the Internet community depending on organization and their business model. If corporate blog gains popularity, there could have thousands of people subscribing to the company feed. This can equate to instant success and popularity of company products. Actually, organization also may start to accepted use of blogging as a part of corporate policy. A corporate blog can be a tool that helps the organization fulfills a business goal. It is also a useful extension of the company image in the marketplace because there was no substitute for bad products or lack of commitment to customer. Besides, it is an opportunity to open a two-way channel between employees and customers. Employee can tell what their wants and needs to the organization and fight for their right as they can have more benefits in the organization. It helps organization have a new relationship with customers and build network because customer may communicate with organization communities unfiltered and promote the instant feedback helps the organization increase service quality. There are many positive outcomes that businesses can derive from adopting social media. Internet is humanizing and corporate blog may helps to humanize organization to customer. It can make the company have good reputation, likability and thus purchase consideration.

An example of corporate blog implementation and it’s effect.

Ex: Google

(http://googleblog.blogspot.com/)

Google blogs are one of the corporate blog which called Blogger in Google (BIG ). Google was successful in implemented the internet Web log system behind its firewall. Few years ago, Google already saw the fantastic benefits in the future by providing corporate blogging tools and expertise to interested clients. Google set up an internal blog for its employees shortly after acquiring the blogging service Blogger in early 2003 and its staffs found that internal blogs has many useful and creative ways. There were a lot of different uses of blogs within the firewall such as employees keeping track of meeting notes, sharing the problem solving information, snippets of code, and interaction within co-workers via company’s internal blogs.

Besides, it also helps intranet and internal base of documents growth. The officials of Google are around 619,000 RSS subscribers and the company has a very extensive blogroll. So, for Google it is growing interest among businesses towards blogs as business communication tools, especially among IT departments. There was because the command of IT organizations today is to do more with less, so the better they can communicate and share things, the more efficient their operations will be. So, there is a huge benefit in blogging for Google in implementing IT projects.

Nowadays, Google so successful in corporate blog so it has a great business idea about the opportunity in providing software and consulting to those companies interested in set up an internal Blogger version and needed it in the future. Google are competing head-to-head against enterprise document management products vendor and enterprise publishing software vendors if they really invest in these business. Corporate blog is going to be a growing trend over the next couple of years.

Pros and cons of corporate blogs:

Pros:

• Leaders can communicate directly with customers, suppliers and investors, as well as employees, helping disseminate and explain strategy.
• Blogs give the writer an opportunity to answer critics in a controlled forum.
• Compared with conference or printed memos to all staff, blogs are highly cost effective.
• A well written blog can give a human face to an otherwise anonymous corporation.

Cons:

• The best non-corporate blogs are spontaneous and genuine. Poorly written corporate blogs can look fake -- or perhaps worse, they reveal incompetence on he part of the writer.
• It is difficult for executives to write freely, particularly at listed companies where they are legally required to publish significant information to all investors at the same time.
• There is a risk that an ill-judged comment could be seized upon by the media or disgruntled investors.
• Negative comment
• Loss of control over message
• Neglect

How to start a corporate blog? Here are some steps show that how a corporate start a blog.

1. Identify what area of communications you want to improve.

· External communication

i. Brand awareness/Brand positioning

ii. Business development

iii. Issues management/lobbying

iv. Crisis communication

v. Media relations

vi. Recruitment marketing

vii. Customer support

viii. Reseller/dealer support

ix. Community relations

· Internal Communication

i. Knowledge management

ii. Sales support

iii. Project communication

2. Choose to start a corporate blog or to encourage an employee blog.

3. Should you start a group blog or an individual blog?

4. What geographic area should the blog cover (global or one country? What language should you use?

5. Company wide blog or blog per practice group, market unit, product group, industry sector?

6. Find employees who are good communicators and willing to spend the time posting on the blog.

7. Get the accept from CEO or whoever has the final say.

8. Create an editorial policy about who gets to blog, tone of voice, areas to cover, length and frequency of posts, information sources to cover, copyright aspects, target audience, do’s and dont’s.

9. Get accept from your IT department. They will worry about security and the risks of having several individuals post information live on a website. Get their help in selecting administration software and setting up the blog, domain, RSS feeds and tracking/measurement capabilities.

10. Create a corporate blog with the correct graphic profile according to your brand guidelines. Include biographies and photos of the bloggers.

11. Create an extensive list of information sources for the bloggers to cover in order to get information to comment on. Include official news sources, media, other blogs, press releases etc.

12. Give your bloggers access to a news aggregator so that they get the feel of RSS feeds and how it works.

13. Give your bloggers a list of blogs to read. Most people are not used to reading blogs and need to become familiar with blogging style writing and netiquette (linking policies etc).

14. Allow a trial period for some weeks, to be able to fine tune and make adjustments.

15. Start an RSS-feed and make the blog public.

16. Begin marketing your blog. List the blog in blog directories
Link to the blog in your email signature and from your corporate web page. Tell your customers and your employees. Don’t send out a press release about it, to get credit let blogs market your blog.

17. Evaluate, adjust and evaluate again.

Electronic Currency

What is Electronic Currency?
Electronic Currency is simply known as it’s own form of currency that has been developed and utilized on the Internet. It's also known as Internet money, electronic money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency, which refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. E-commerce has caused exponential growth in the use of Electronic Currency, and therefore, more people are getting involved, and greater profits are being made for those who know how to profit from Electronic Currency.

E-currency fact sheet
E-currency is precious metal-backed Internet currency. To open an account, an individual "deposits" money with an online e-currency company that then converts the amount into gold bullion. Via the Internet, the account holder can transfer ownership of some or all of that gold into someone else's e-currency account. Ownership can be repeatedly transferred. E-currency is a sort of online version of "warehouse banks," which similarly converted account holders' deposits into gold or silver bullion stored in the bank. These institutions became popular in the 1980s among domestic right-wing extremists, who used them to launder money, hide assets and to commit other financial abuses. E-currency has been widely used by perpetrators of pyramid scams. Swindlers demand payment in e-currency because, unlike with checks or credits cards, the charges clear instantly and cannot be cancelled. Experts estimate that about half of e-currency transactions are related to scams or online games.

Example of E-currency
Many systems will sell their electronic currency directly to the end user, such as Paypal and WebMoney, but other systems, such as e-gold, sell only through third party digital currency exchangers. In the case of Octopus Card in Hong Kong, deposits work similarly to banks'. After Octopus Card Limited receives money for deposit from users, the money is deposited into banks, which is similar to debit-card-issuing banks redepositing money at central banks.

Future evolution
The main focuses of digital cash development are being able to use it through a wider range of hardware such as secured credit cards; and linked bank accounts that would generally be used over an internet means, for exchange with a secure micropayment system such as in large corporations (PayPal). Furthering network evolution in terms of the use of digital cash, a company named DigiCash is at the focus of creating an e-cash system that would allow issuers to sell electronic coins at some value. When they are purchased they come under someone’s own name and are stored on his computer or under his online identity. At all times, the e-cash is linked to the e-cash company and all transactions go through it, so the e-cash company secures anything that is purchased. Only the company knows your information and will properly direct purchases to your location.

The application of prepaid cash card for consumer

Nowadays, prepaid cash card are one of the newest and most interesting financial products on the market, and there are something that consumer should be made aware of. However, many people do not know what prepaid cards are and how it can benefit them. Prepaid cash card is new types of payment that buyers without bringing cash but still can paid for everything. It was different with credit card, it is a type of card such as debit card that contains a concept of “Pay first, spend later”. It means consumer pay money on a card and spend it only when they make purchase or transaction. Consumers prefer prepaid cash card because they acts virtually the same as cash, only with much more security. Prepaid cash cards can be useful for anyone who wants to control their spending but still have the security and usage features of a credit card.

What are the advantages?

The major advantage of a prepaid card is that consumer can easily keep track of their spending and limit themselves to a certain level of spending each month. Also, consumer no need to pay interest and don’t have to go through credit checks to get one. All of the funds on the card are completely controlled by the amount of money you wish to put on it. This means there is no risk of borrowing too much and getting into debt such as credit card function “Spend first, paid later”.

Different images of Touch 'n Go















Most common Prepaid cash card used in Malaysia

In Malaysia, the most common prepaid cash card that Malaysian used is Touch ’n Go card. It is an Electronic Payment System which provide by Touch 'n Go Sdn Bhd (formerly known as Rangkaian Segar Sdn Bhd). Touch ’n Go card are electronic purse that can be used at all highways in Malaysia and major public transports in Klang Valley, selected parking sites and theme park.

Touch ’n Go uses contactless smartcard technology. The electronic card reader will reduce the balance stored inside the card when the card approaches to the card reader. The card looks similar to a credit card. Consumer may use the card as long as it is preloaded with electronic cash. User can reload the card at toll plazas, train stations, Automated Teller Machines, Cash Deposit Machines, Petrol kiosks and at some authorized third party outlets by Touch ’n Go Company. Besides, it is also very convenient because consumer no need to queue and wait at the cash lane to complete the transaction. The reload value that Touch ’n Go Company allow is within minimum value RM20 to maximum value RM500.

Promo with partners:

Ticketless parking:

• Bangsar Shopping Centre
• Sg.Wang Plaza
• Pantai Medical Centre
• KL Sentral
• Pusat Bandar Damansara
• Hospital Pakar Damansara
• Dataran Palma, Ampang
• Megan Phileo Avenue
• One Utama Shopping Centre
• Others

Fast Foods Restaurants

• A&W
• Burger King
• Dunkin Donuts

Convenience stores

• 7-Eleven
• Caltex Star Mart

Hypermarkets

• Carrefour

Cinemas

• Cathay Cineleisure

Where can Reload and how much it charge?

Operator Service Charge

1. Highways = Nil
2. Public transports (LRT/KTM Komuter) = Nil
3. Petrol Stations = RM0.50
4. Banks – ATMs (users must have an ATM account) = RM0.50
5. Banks – CDMs (open to all customers) = RM1.00
6. Third party agents = RM0.50
   

What benefit by using Touch 'n Go?

The cards can be categorize into 4 types:

Prepaid card

Standard card


A standard Touch 'n Go cards fare structure currently available for adult fare for CTS and standard class vehicles with 2 axles and 3 or 4 wheels (Class 1) excluding taxis for toll fare.

Postpaid cards

Fleet Xs card




Biz Xs card



Auto-reload card




Zing Card


The Touch 'n Go Zing is a companion card (works as standard card) that is linked to Visa, MasterCard or American Express issued by participating banks in Malaysia.

Multi-purpose card

MyKad


A value added application for Malaysian identity card as e-purse.

Others countries pre-paid cash card are list as below and they have the same function with Touch n'Go in Malysia:

EZ-link (Singapore)

EZ-Link card is a contractless smartcard based on Sony's FeliCa smartcard technology, used for payments in Singapore especially for transportation for Singapore.It is established in year 2001, it was promoted as a means for faster travel due to speedier boarding times on buses, MRT, LRT, ERP and payment in some public services such as vending machine, food centre and supermarket.

Octopus(Hong Kong)

Octopus card is a rechargeable contractless stored value smart card used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline systems in Hong Kong. It was launched in September 1997 to collect fares for the city's mass transit system, the Octopus card system has since grown into a widely used payment system for virtually all public transport in Hong Kong. It is also used for payment at convenience stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, on-street parking meters, car parks, and other point- of-sale applications such as service stations and vending machines.

Oyster (United Kingdon-London)

The Oyster card is a form of electronic ticketing used on Transport of London and some National Rail services within the Greater London area of the United Kingdom. The card was first issued to the public in 2003 with a limited range of features and there continues to be a phased introduction of further functions. By March 2007 over 10 million Oyster cards had been issued, and more than 80% of all journeys on services run by Transport for London used the Oyster card.