Mobile Payments: Are Malaysians ready for it?

Do you know what mobile payment is? Is it a money transaction through the mobile phone? Yes, exactly! Mobile payment refers to a payment service that operated under financial regulation and performed via a mobile device. Consumers can pay for different types of services or products through mobile payment instead of paying cash, credit cards, or cheque.

There are four models in mobile payments:

1.      Carrier Dominance Model

2.      Bank Dominance Model

3.      Collaboration Model

4.      Peer-to-Peer Model

Are Malaysians ready for mobile payments? In my opinion, I think they are! Because, today’s world is a network world as well as Malaysia is also considered as a developing country. Through mobile payment, Malaysian can just make the payments through their mobile phone, but not paying cash to the services or products they want to purchase. This is a much easier way for them.

In addition, Citibank Malaysia has launched this mobile payments system to Malaysian. Thus, Malaysian for sure will be ready for this system since it is convenience for them. Citibank states with the slogan that “Paying bills whenever you can and whenever you are”; this slogan will attracts Malaysians who are living in a busy lifestyle of today’s modern society. Citibank allows Malaysian pay their household bills instantly with just a simple SMS from their mobile phone anywhere and anytime just through this mobile payments system. Malaysians will be no more hassles searching for the internet connection as well as saving their time.


http://www.telecomcircle.com/2009/03/mobile-payments-business-models/

Transaction privacy and security: How does e-commerce affect my privacy

E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web (www). When we, as a consumer buy or sell thing online which involve registration, IP address, we are actually involve in e-commerce or in other word, we are part of e-market.

How does transaction privacy and security affect our privacy? 
As we involve in e-commerce, when we access to some website for free, we usually click on agree to all during our registration or signing up session. Yet, in the term and conditions, there is a condition where we agree to receive targeted ads. With this, the company or that particular website can track your online activities and determine which ads to show you.
This is actually using SPYWARE.

So, what is Spyware?

Spyware is Internet jargon for Advertising Supported software (Adware). This usually involves the tracking and sending of data and statistics via a server installed on the user's PC and the use of your Internet connection in the background. It is a way for shareware authors to make money from a product, other than by selling it to the users. There are several large media companies that offer them to place banner ads in their products in exchange for a portion of the revenue from banner sales. Adware is the product of spyware but it is not all.
There are also products that do display advertising but do not install any tracking mechanism on your system. These products are not indexed in our database. Some users who didn't notice the term and condition might think the advertisement is annoying, however, it is not an illegal software. Due to privacy concern, users might object to it and prefer not to be tracked. 

Cookies?

Cookies on internet is not like what we always eat during tea-break. It is not as nice as that.



Another affect on consumer is due to cookies. Cookies are inherently harmless. They are simple text files that help coordinate the remote website servers and your browser to display the full range of features offered by most contemporary websites. These features include all your activities on internet. As cookie technology evolves along with website publishing and advertisement technology, privacy issues are sure to arise time and again. Third party (people who supply the cookies) will be able to access to users’ personal information and figure out their behavior. 

As a conclusion, cookies and spyware do have bad consequences to users as people usually don't like being tracked. Even though there is no harm, people like to have privacy and didn't want other to monitor what they are browsing. However, they have some benefit towards users as well. It makes us to use computer more convenience as it helps us to stored our ID and password on computer in cookies. Besides, if I am the owner of webpage, I can easily approach to my potential client using cookies.


Not feeling comfortable with cookies and spyware? Get rid from it. There are few websites suggest how to remove or prevent it. As shown in below.

Related links:
1) http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/spyware-remove.aspx

2)http://www.pcworld.com/article/129094/how_to_remove_spyware_from_your_pc.html

3) http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cookies

Cyber Crimes in Malaysia

    Cyber crime is a criminal activity done by using computers and the internet. Although Internet is a great place for working together and building a better world, it also has its dark side. Every year billions of dollars are made in a number of different cyber crimes and the victims are usually people like you and me.

    Based on the articles found, the most cyber crimes in Malaysia are love scams and fraudulent online purchases among those 403 cases that reported within the first three months of the year. The statistics shows that in year 2011, the frequency of cyber crime has increased by 348 cases and incurred in losses by RM16 million as compared to year 2010. For the love scams, it usually falls under women especially single-mothers, unmarried woman and women with marital problems as African nationals love affairs with local women.

     As for fraudulent online purchases, the reported cases are commonly reported by those who bought goods and services through common websites such as alibaba.com, e-lelong.com and mudah.my.  People leave a lot of personal information online and such information can leave the people vulnerable to let others stalked. Apart from that, another cyber crime was online financial fraud whereby customers were asked for their bank account number.  The simple concept for those identity thefts is, get access into people account and use their personal information for their own benefit. So, never connect to your bank account on a public computer, or using Wi-Fi access point that are not trusted.

                In conclusion, computers and the Internet do made our lives easier in many ways yet it is unfortunate that people use these technologies to take advantage of others. Hence, it is smart to protect yourself by using antivirus and must be careful whenever enter any personal information.


Related Article:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/cyber-criminals-scammed-victims-of-rm16m-in-q1/

Electronic currency

Electronic currency also known as e-currency, e-money, e-cash, digital money, digital cash, digital currency, cyber currency. It is the money represents a system of debits or credits used to exchange electronically, to exchange value with another system. It involves the use of computer networks, Internet and digital stored value systems.

We have 3 kinds of electronic money systems:


1. Centralised electronic money systems - Quite a number of parties use centralized system, such as PayPal, WebMoney, cashU and others. They use this systems to sell their electronic currency directly to the end users, but other systems sell through third party by using digital currency exchangers. Some community currencies work with electronic transactions, such as local exchange trading systems and Community Exchange System.

Example is the Hong Kong Octopus card. The electronic money deposits work similar as regular bank deposits. When users of Octopus card deposit money, the money is deposited into the bank. It is similar to debit-card-issuing banks.


2. Decentralized electronic money systems - It includes the Ripple monetary system, which is a monetary system based on trust network. Bitcoin is also one of the decentralized systems that is a peer-to-peer electronic monetary system based on cryptography. The last one is loom, a commodity exchange system that is digitally encrypted.


3. Offline 'anonymous' systems - when using offline electronic money, before accepting the money from users, merchants do not need to interact with the bank. Merchants can collect money that users spent and deposit the money later. This could be done offline,which the merchant can go to the bank with his storage media to exchange e-money for cash. E-cash is usually refers to anonymouse e-cash in cryptography. The first offline e-cash system was proposed by Chaum and Naor.


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