Internet War

In the age of information almost everything in the world changes very fast in compare to the past, for instance people's behavior, wearing cloth, relationship and friendship and even traveling .Most of the time, I really try to be optimistic and see every thing good and bright. Changing people cloths in the world can not be so bad if we think about how convenience and comfort they are . I am not worried also about how people around the world change their languages as far as I think an international language can increase better and easier understanding of people . But how much can we be optimistic? Do you agree with me it is crazy that many old civilizations forget all about fathers customs? Do you think Internet is the most guilty one to spread western culture and causes many young generations of old countries attract to the west ? If you are still optimistic as much as I was ,please look at online advertising of US and Europe products more rigorous than before. How about online games? Can you see any thing unethical and abnormal which is just acceptable in western culture? Soon, you will find that they try to dominate their culture in other countries slowly and subtly without any barrier or defence.In my opinion ,as I mentioned at the first line every thing changes in this age and one of them is how countries war. Obviously not too many soldiers need for battling and not too many weapons require. Computer programmers are their soldiers and online ads or games and many other tools replace with guns and swords. The most painful thing is there is not any horn to alert that the war start and enemies do not wear armor in which can recognize friends among enemies or enemies among friends.

Football, Internet and Racism

300 million people are estimated to access Internet in the world. Among them you can see racist , violent and extremist who try to learn about this new medium and use it for their purpose. Internet is a very strong tool for individuals, organizations and groups who want to reach new audiences and recruiting especially among young generation.In 1995 just one site on the Internet has racism activity ,then in 1997 the statistics increased to 600 and today unfortunately it goes up to more than 2500 sites.

Sports world also are used as a tool for racism. For instance some groups that link to the neo-Nazis and right wing extremist use Internet to spread racism behaviour inside and outside football stadiums.Football supporter sites are the most active party in racism and xenophobia . Furthermore, some players, managers and clubs also work in this part but their activities are invisible to all.

Cyberterrorism

Cyber terrorism means that terrorist's use the Internet and other telecommunication tools in order to supporting organizational activities and for gaining expertise to achieve operational goals.Is cyber terrorism a synonym word for cyber crime?

Although some criticism state that the phrase cyber terrorism is not a proper term as in cyber space they only can produce annoyances not terror, others believe the effect of computer attack is more important than tools that is used by terrorists like bombs. They also declare economic disruption, fear and civilian deaths can be considered as terrorism attack too.

But do not forget even terrorists use computer and Internet for the strategy of spreading their massages quickly and to repeat them until they have saturated cyber space.

Reference :

http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=432

No More Bothering Comments

The lecturer of cyberlaw - Dr. Sonny Zulhuda- guided the class how to protect our self from defamation issues especially in our blogs.He pointed at two options that we have when one particular comment try to defame one person in our blogs.The first one is replying to that comment in order to reject it and showing the disagreement to that comment and making our self away from defamation others. The second item which he explained it as a easier way, is simply delete the comment. I think even though this kind of recommendation seems very simple but on the other hand can prevent many fundamental issues in the future. To proving how subtle ways they are, I have to show you this case which happened earlier in Dubai.

A UAE online magazine has to shut down for one month and ordered to pay Dh10,000 in damages for defamation.The case is about an article published by the magazine under the title "Abu Dhabi TV: Emirate TV only in name", But the case was not related to an article by the editor or the journalist, and was only about comments posted by readers. The judge said comments should were replied or the website manager should deleted them.The web manager said the huge number of comments on the article demonstrated the interest of visitors in the subject, and also demonstrated that it was hard for them to carefully read all the comments.

So after reading this case do you agree with me we should be more careful listeners especially to the lecturer?!

Reference of news:

http://gulfnews.com/

A Defamation Case

Today, in cyberlaw class we learnt about defamation( damaging one person's reputation by publishing false communication). For being sure to understand all aspects of defamation, I searched about latest case related to this issue. Here is the interesting case that I found.

One of the ex-employee of Rite Aid Company sued the company and online employee screening (ChoicePoint) because of defamation.

The story started when he fired because the company discovered the loss of more than $7,000 worth of cash and merchandise and was suspected to him.Then the company sent all information to the ChoicePoint.

The employee who claimed himself innocent ,could not find any other jobs because of now-spotty background.But the firm said every thing about him was truth so it can not be liable.

Now, I can remember the four elements of the defamation which the lecturer explained them in the class. He also emphasized all of these elements are necessary in order to establish a case in defamation for the plaintiff:
1. it must be false;
2. the statements must be defamatory in the sense that it lowers the plaintiff’s reputation;
3. it must refer to the plaintiff; and
4. it must be published.

Reference of news:

http://www.hrtechnews.com/

Frauds do not discriminate me and you , my dear classmates

Online attacks include phishing, pharming and Trojans is one of the most organized crime in recent decades. High education institutes, universities and colleges also are targeted by cyber criminals.But what is wealthy in colleges website?

Attackers mostly focus on accessing the log in credentials which be used by students to enter in their personal university page. This credentials compass of students user names and passwords. After accessing to students' information two possibility may occur.

Each student's personal profile consist of many important data such as students loans and banking account, credit card (mostly used for paying tuition fees) and also personal information such as date of birth and mail address.So the first possibility is stealing these data.

The second possibility is frauds use these information to spreed more spams because an email which send by university usually do not identify as a spam also it may be enclosed by students.

So I suggest to all students specially my dear classmates to be careful more than before. Frauds do not discriminate me and you.

Online Governance

Who knows me and you in cyberspace?and how? Have you ever thought about it? Is there anything like a Yellow Book in the internet that records all numbers and addresses?If you want to find any one from the Internet your task is typing his address or name into your computer. Of course, the address is unique (has to be) therefore, the computer guides you to the exact person that you target.But the question is , is there any one or any organization that is responsible for this case? If any conflict happens who can solve it and base on which regulation?Following are some information that I found in order to answering to these questions.

In 1998, the U.S Department of Commerce managed to creation a nonprofit regulatory body with responsibility of administration of the Internet name and address. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers established in response. According to the ICCAN website ,ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet.ICCAN also claimed in its website that it helped design and implement a low-cost system for resolving disputes over domain name ownership.

For more information please look at the ICCAN website :http://www.icann.org/

The Cyber Harassment Have Cost Us Children's Lives

I am very happy today as I heard the IOWA Division of Criminal Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force run a new website Thursday to help parents fight sexual predators.As a mother I am really worried about online harassment and children cheating and I am seriously agree with the Michael Ferjak statements: "I'm amazed frankly about how much they don't know about this.The sexting, the cyber harassment, cyber bullying those have cost us children's lives." He also declared removing the access of internet is not a good reply to this kind of crime. Even children deny to tell parents the truth because they afraid of losing their computer and internet.He stated parents always aware children to speak to strangers on the street but how about cyberspace?Have you ever spoken with your kids about online thieves? Therefore in my opinion parents must be fully aware of the potential risk of internet for children and also avoiding kids from the sexing and the cyber harassment depends completely on the subtle behavior of parents.The website has many useful tips for parent which I summarized main points here but I strongly recommend to all parents to read the website by them self.

Avoid unfamiliar "Chat Rooms",

Don't talk to people you don't know,

Never use your real name, age, or indication of your gender in your screen name or email address,

Never post personal information in a user profile.

The website address is http://iaicac.org

Reference of news:

http://www.kcci.com/

FBI Investigates iPad Cyber Security Breach

According to the Reuters today's news, the email addresses of more than 114,000 ipad users were disclosed therefore FBI started to investigate about this cyber threat.Gawker website was the first reporter.The breach of personal information happened when hackers group who named itself Goatse Security obtained a list of email addresses of ipad owners from AT&T ipad subscriber data. The list included email addresses of celebrities, chief executives and politicians.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and film mogul Harvey Weinstein are other victims of intrusion.

AT&T , has exclusive U.S right to carry both iphone and ipad ,accepted the breach but said the problem had solved.

FBI spokesman also said FBI has acknowledged the security breach and started its investigation.

ipad is a successful device in whole the world and ipad launched in April, has sold about 2million around the world. Critics believe this current issue do not have any affect to the popularity of ipad.

Reference of news:

www.reuters.com

Censorship in Cyberspace

Censorship refers to limit or control of publishing or accessing the internet's information. Base on this definition censorship is possible in some technical methods such as IP blocking (access to a certain IP address is denied) ,URL filtering ,DNS filtering and so on. It is obvious each country has specific regulation for freedom of speech in both online and offline condition and uses own method to band the internet.For instance Smart Filter which is a software program owned by Secure Computing is used by Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan in Asia. US and UK are other Secure Computing users.

It is not surprising that users respond to filtering and always attempt to find a successful way to break the censorship.Some common methods are proxy websites, Java Anon Proxy, Tor and Sneaker nets.

Countries around the world categorize in to 5 sections in term of Open net Initiative: Pervasive, Substantial, Nominal, Indirect, Watchlist.

Example of Pervasive are Cuba and China and Substantial's example is Australia.

On the other hand, Reporters without Borders published a list in 2010 and named 13 countries as internet enemies. China , Cuba, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are seen in this list.

References of information:

www.jerf.org/writings/communicationEthics

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

Enticing Emails

In this post, I want to explain about one of the most common form of cyber crime.In this type of cyber crime , generally an email is send to the victim requesting to help for transferring large amount of money.Then the scammer requests money to pay for costs of transformation. As this money is send to scammer he/ she will disappear or may continue to fool the victim with some excuses such as may says a problem occurred during transformation that needs more money.

Another side of this crime is scammers aim to identify confidential information about their victim and use these information in another fraudulent activities in their names.It is a very dangerous situation for individuals and also firms. When criminals identified about ID numbers, bank accounts and addresses of individuals they can use it for opening accounts in the other's name, steal money and other kinds of crimes.The result of this kind of crime for victim could be bankrupt, or sentenced , prisoned and blacklisted.

So it is necessary to know about this kind of cyber crime in order to protect yourself from scammers.Be careful when use internet for transferring money and do not care and reply for any suspected email.

Related to this topic I read a news with this title"Australians tricked out of $70m in scams". The spokesman of Consumer watchdog Choice said "Electronic goods buyers are being warned to be aware of fake customs letters requesting payment for breaching pornography laws relating to pornography purportedly found on cameras and phones."

The First Recorded Cybercrime

It is interesting to know the first cyber crime related to the abacus which happened in 1820! Abacus which is the earliest and simplest form of computer ,was used about 3500 B.C in some parts of the world such as China.

Joseph- Marie Jacquard who had a textile manufacture in France introduced the loom.This device threatened employees in the firm whom decided to sabotage in order to discourage Jacquard from further use of the loom. This act considered as the first cyber crime in the world.

Copyright Protection in US

No Electronic Theft (NET) Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1997. The NET Act gives copyright protection for computer content and enforces sanctions when infringement is committed for private financial gain or by reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of copyrighted works having $1,000 or mote in retail value.

Another related law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).It grants ISPs protection from acts of user infringement .This law enacted in 1998.DMCA also criminalizes the circumvention of software protections and the development or distribution of circumvention products.

United States Patent And Trademark Office

United states Patent And Trademark Office or briefly UNPTO is an agency in America which has responsibility to issue patent for inventors and register for product's trademark.This agency does not work alone.It has close relationship and cooperation with European Patent Office (EPO) and Japan Patent Office(JPO). At the end of year 2009 this agency had about 9,000 employees, including more than 6,000 patent examiner and about 400 trade examining attorney.Patent examiners are mostly scientists and engineers without law degree and trademark examiners are licensed by attorney.It is also interesting to know the first patent in US was issued in 1790 for making Pot ash and Pearl ash by Samuel Hopkins and president George Washington signed it at that time.

Since 2004 inventors or their atterony can register online by compliting a PDF form from its website.USPO dicided to increase carefully reviews applications for software-related protection.

References of statistics:

http://www.wikipedia.org/

Today all my MBA classmates attended in a lecture with was about Cyber law and Privacy Regulation. The title of this lecture was exactly Selected Privacy and Security Issues in Information Technology - From the Lens of Laws, Regulation and Politics.The lecturer, Mr.Noriswadi Ismail ,spoke about data protection and privacy issues and explained these subjects with some examples such as CCTV in the London underground, CTOS and HSBC.During the speech he suggested us to read a book .

At the end of this speech attenders discussed about the difficulty of using Western model of privacy regulations in developing countries.Culture was mentioned as a most important problem to implement any European and US rules in other countries especially in Asia.

What is the responsibility of CI3?

I read a news with this title : The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) celebrated its tenth anniversary yesterday.So I was curious to know about this organization more. These are some information that I found.

From 2000 , the year this organization established, until now about 1.5 million cyber crime and child pornography recorded and investigated.

The mission of this organization is to receive, develop and investigate criminal complaints in order to investigate in cyber crime area faster.Also IC3 works as a partnership between NW3C (National White Collar Crime Center)and Federal Bureau of Investigation and provide facility for cyber crime's victims to report any suspected or actual computer crime. "this partnership has increased law enforcement's ability to collect,analyze and refer Internet crime complaints to our domestic and international law enforcement partners " said Bill Hinerman, FBI Unit Chief for IC3.

For requesting any help a victim can go to the IC3 website and fill a form which consist of why, when and how you believe you were defrauded and other details.

IC3 web address is www.ci3.gov/default.aspx

Reference of news:

http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/

TRUSTe

Web site needs help to create trust for their users. To do so an independent and non profit privacy initiative called TRUSTe was established.TRUSTe will give any web site its logo and seal if that website accept all its philosophies. Also sites must publish the following information on their sites to obtain the TRUSTe logo.

1- What personal information is being gathered by your site?

2- Who is gathering the date?

3- How the date will be used?

4- With whom the date Will be shared?

5- Users have the choice regarding to gathering, use and distribution of their data.

6- the site must protect users collected data such as credit card from loss or misuse

7- users must have the ability to update or correct information

It is obvious TRUSTe is not the only organization which provide such facilities for websites.

For more information look at http://www.truste.org/

Opt-In Vs Opt-Out

The opt-in means that users give permission to the company to send commercial email and ads to them or to share their information to any other seller that has agreement with the first sellers.For activating opt-in users check a box on web and enter their email addresses.

The opt-out has almost the same meaning as opt-in but the only difference is users have to uncheck the box on a web to hinder being in the firms email list and sending emails or giving others their information.

Criticises complain about this practice because mostly users are not aware about it and may be surprised when receiving email.

Although this practice is not fair and hurt users privacy but marketers like to use it because these techniques are part of traditional marketing strategy which is called permission marketing (meaning turning strangers into customers.)

Net Creation's Post Master Direct is a list broker and has 50 million opt-in names and email addresses ,13 million of them live outside of US.Brokers rent lists to other companies.(www.netcreations.com)

Credit Card Number Theft

A credit card number could be stolen in three different places on the Internet. It could be stolen from a users home or business computer, it could be stolen in transit from the users computer to the sellers web site or it could be stolen once it reaches the sellers site.

how likely is each of these ways?

1- Stolen from the users computer : Unlikely unless users store credit card numbers on their computers .

2- Stolen in transit:Almost impossible and in fact this situation has never been reported as long as vendors use a secure Internet connection(http).Encryption algorithms make this possibility remote.

3- Stolen at the merchants site:Probably the most user acceptable concern given the following possibilities

the merchant may be cheater

the merchant may be honest but have a dishonest employee

the merchant may be honest but fails to protect its database of credit card numbers from hackers .

So one of the most important way for transaction security is using encryption system.

Cyberlaw in Iran

The number of Internet users in Iran is increasing very fast .(Iran is in the eleventh step for the most Internet users in the world.)As we know computer is like a knife with two edges, therefore the number of computer crime goes up too. In this situation criticises complained about lack of laws for computer crimes and disability of traditional laws so they forced Parliament to enact some laws specifically for cyberspace that happened two years ago in about 25 wavers(2008).For instance punishment for any unlawful data collection is

- Imprisonment between 91 days to one year OR

- Fine between 5 to 20 million Rials OR

- both

and another computer crime is changing or modifying data which its punishment is as follow:

- Imprisonment between one to five years OR

- Fine between 20 to 100 million Rials OR

- both

Inside a global cybercrime ring

BOSTON, March 24 — Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine’s capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world’s most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.
As business boomed, the firm added a human resources department, hired an internal IT staff and built a call centre to dissuade its victims from seeking credit card refunds. Employees were treated to catered holiday parties and picnics with paintball competitions.
Top performers got bonuses as young workers turned a blind eye to the harm the software was doing. “When you are just 20, you don’t think a lot about ethics,” said Maxim, a former Innovative Marketing programmer who now works for a Kiev bank and asked that only his first name be used for this story. “I had a good salary and I know that most employees also had pretty good salaries.”
A researcher with anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc who spent months studying the company’s operations estimates that the business generated revenue of about US$180 million (RM612 million) in 2008, selling programmes in at least two dozen countries. “They turned compromised machines into cash,” said the researcher, Dirk Kollberg.
The company built its wealth pioneering scareware — programmes that pretend to scan a computer for viruses, and then tell the user that their machine is infected. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over their credit card information, paying US$50 to US$80 to “clean” their PC. Scareware, also known as rogueware or fake antivirus software, has become one of the fastest-growing, and most prevalent, types of internet fraud. Software maker Panda Security estimates that each month some 35 million PCs worldwide, or 3.5 per cent of all computers, are infected with these malicious programmes, putting more than US$400 million a year in the hands of cybercriminals.
Groups like Innovative Marketing build the viruses and collect the money but leave the work of distributing their merchandise to outside hackers. Once infected, the machines become virtually impossible to operate. The scareware also removes legitimate anti-virus software from vendors including Symantec Corp, McAfee and Trend Micro Inc, leaving PCs vulnerable to other attacks. When victims pay the fee, the virus appears to vanish, but in some cases the machine is then infiltrated by other malicious programmes. Hackers often sell the victim’s credit card credentials to the highest bidder.

It is really hard to believe.Mostly an anti virus producer go through our mind as a life boat. What a bad feeling when we realize exactly that boat is the cause of our sinking.The same feeling make me sad when I read this news. Now I am thinking about how can realize our enemies from our friends? But it is business and we know that many people use this kind of way to create money and antivirus manufacturers are not alone in this way.On the other hand it means some times cybercrime can occur even by legal manufacturers and under the law shed.Hope law can capture them too.

Reference:

http://the malaysianinsider.com/

Facebook Privacy Regulation Issues

BRUSSELS, April 23 — Over the past six years, social networking has been the Internet’s stand-out phenomenon, linking up more than one billion people eager to exchange videos, pictures or last-minute birthday wishes.The sites, led by Face book with more than 400 million users, rely in large part on people’s willingness to share a wealth of personal information with an ever-expanding network of “friends,” either ones they actually know and see from time to time, or those they have met virtually through the Internet.
Members’ eagerness to add contacts has given the sites a powerful global reach, attracting users from seven to 70 years old, from skateboarders to investment bankers, and with them a deep and potentially rich vein of targeted advertising revenue.
But at the same time it has concentrated vast amounts of data — telephone numbers and addresses, people’s simple likes and dislikes — on the servers of a small number of companies,....

As a matter of fact, no body can deny the popularity of Facebook and other social networks in the world but the main concentration is about controlling and limiting the data collection by social networks and forcing them to respect privacy regulations. Governments- Big Brothers -have more roles in order to enforce them for privacy setting limitation and also increasing people awareness about their rights and understanding all risks assossited with exposing personal data . This challenges becomes more important when children create their own Face book page who are not aware of its risk completely.

Reference:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/

Financial and Cybercrime most prevalent economic crime in Malaysia

The title above is on my classmate's blog(mehdiebadi1.blogspot.com). Addition to my friend's suggestion which is so interesting and I am agree with him, I have two other ideas.

1- One day could named specially for cyber law in the world to increase people's attention about computer and Internet crimes. For instance TV, radio and newspaper speak about nature and environment in Earth Day. More TV programs are built and more articles in magazines and newspapers are written in order to make more people's attention to green products and protecting earth.If we have the same day for cyber law or something like it , the same may happen for it and TV and radio programs will speak much more about computer crime and cyber law.Teachers may explain to students in the class about what is cyberspace and how they can protect them self from cyber criminals.

2-Behind any medicine there is a label which tell us how we can use it, the ingredients of it and how we keep it away from children and so on. But we never see the same label in computer or laptop manual. Every one who have a computer or laptop should know how to protect his or her digital files, email, and so on from cyber criminals .This is one of manufacturer's social responsibility .

FBI's Most-Wanted Cyber Crooks

From identity theft to computer intrusion, five criminals on FBI's most-wanted share two similarities: They are all international cyber criminals.
Canadian national William Charles Rath is wanted for allegedly plotting to defraud a satellite provider out of millions of dollars from 1996 to 1999. Allegedly, Rath organized, sold and manufactured illegal DirecTV access cards throughout North America, enabling individuals to receive satellite programming without having to pay for the service. Rath allegedly used a network of individuals to distribute IST throughout North America, and created a business called Cottonwood Limited in the Turks and Caicos Islands to manage some of the proceeds from the sale of IST.

Romania-born Claudiu Virgil Turlea is wanted for his involvement in a criminal enterprise organization believed responsible for a series of fraud schemes totaling $4.3 million. In one scheme, members of the organization allegedly hacked into bank accounts of U.S. businesses through fraudulently acquired log-in information and wire-transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars into bank accounts controlled by him and his co-conspirators.
According to the FBI, Turlea is a known member of a Romanian organized crime syndicate and may be found in Canada, trying to recruit people to assist with cyber crimes.

I always think investigation about cyber crime would be more difficult than offline crime as finding a cue in cyberspace could not be easy. I do not know my assumption is true or it comes from lack of my computer knowledge. Any way, in my opinion establishing an international organization especially for cybercrime investigation in order to finding and arresting frauds sooner and faster is a good and effective way because these guys are not the only cyber criminals in the world and it seems as the internet accessibility increase around the world, the number of these kinds of crime would go up.

Knowing more about Alex Randall

Do you know who started the world first e-commerce?and when?

Alex Randall and Cameron Hall are founders of Boston Computer Exchange in 1982.Boston Computer Exchange called also BCE or BoCoEx interchangeably.Randall had a degree in General System Research and Hall was economist.This company was a marketplace and used by people who decided to sell their second hand computers.Initially Boston Computer Exchanged used a paper databased but soon its founders(Randall & his wife -Hall) decided to establish a computerized marketplace for trade and after that time this company were named as the world first e-commerce company.

Reference:

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

E-commerce Payment and Trust Issues

As I mentioned in latest post, one major barrior to stop and discourage people to use credit card and online buying is trust.When anyone wants to purchase an object via internet first he or she may ask himself or herself " If I do it online does seller recieve the money? If I insert my acount number does any one else may see it? How can I make sure sellers will not deny my payment? How I can be sure the purchased item will send to me? Is there any place or court that I can complain about buying online if any problem occurs? Is there any law which can support me? '. These kind of questions always come to mind of buyers and suffer them because of their lake of knowledge about Cyberlaw.

The statistics below can show some important issues that online users concern .

Security of credit caed transactions 86%

Purchasing privacy 75%

Censorship 72%

Hate group Web sites 47%

Depiction of violence 38%

Pornography 30%

Reference:

http://www.lycos.com/

Latest Cybercrime news - 16 April 2010

Gonzalez accomplice gets five years for hacking TJX - Computerworld:

"IDG News Service - Ending a chapter in one of the worst hacking cases in U.S. history, a federal judge handed down a five-year sentence Thursday to a 25-year-old man who helped steal tens of millions of credit card numbers.
Damon Patrick Toey had already pleaded guilty to charges that he sold batches of stolen credit card data, called dumps, on behalf of convicted hacker Albert Gonzalez and helped him infiltrate the systems of a number of companies. Gonzalez was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison, the longest sentence ever handed down in the U.S. for a computer crime.
Operating out of a Miami condominium owned by Gonzalez, Toey worked in a hacking ring that broke into systems belonging to a number of U.S. retailers, as well as Heartland Payment Systems, a major processor of U.S. credit card transactions.
Toey was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William Young in federal court in Boston. After serving his five-year sentence, he will undergo three years of supervised release. He must also pay a $100,000 fine. Gonzalez led a crew of hackers who broke into networks by hacking wireless access points and then later used SQL injection attacks to access corporate databases via the Web. They broke into companies that included TJX, Office Max, Barnes & Noble and Dave & Buster's, ultimately selling millions of credit card numbers to Russian criminals and using some of the data to make unauthorized ATM withdrawals. Toey is the last of six U.S. men to be sentenced in connection with the hacking. The group's offshore accomplices have not been arrested".



In my opinion, news like that , increase the fear of consumers about e-commerce and on line transaction. One main reason for unsuccessful online trade is trust especially in emerging countries(I will explain about it later).However, this kind of news showed us this may happen even in developed countries.On the other hand $100,000 fund and five years sentence can not reform the major impact of this kind of crime and phenomen that may have on the online payment and transaction.

Referece:


http://www.cybercrime.gov/

Now it is the time to speak about disadvantages of e-commerce. Obviously,not all aspects of using Internet for doing business are desired.However, benefits of Internet for e-marketers lure them without thinking or searching about drawbacks of electronic commerce.Traditional business has own risk but doing business in cyberspace and using Internet for selling and buying products increase this risk much more.
Risky payment, lack of enforceable remedies, privacy and trust issues and other unfair activities are the most fundumental barriers that must be considered for electronic commerce.

Introduction

Electronic commerce which is mostly called e-commerce is doing business over the electronic systems such as internet.After 1970 when the first use of electronic data interchange(EDI) was established , e-commerce has had great growth.Although electronic commerce has many advanteges, always keep in your mind some disadvanteges and drawbacks of it.Doing bussiness in global market,24 hours a day business transaction, decreasing cost of transacton and increasing market share and profibility are those main adventages that always come to mind firstly.

References:

Georgios I.Zekos,Department of international Economics,Democritos University of Thrace,Amvrosia-Komotini,Greece

Advanteges and Disadvanteges of Electronic Commerce, http://www.buzzle.com/