Advantages on internet

Communication:
The foremost target of internet has always been the communication. And internet
has excelled beyond the expectations .Still; innovations are going on to make it
faster, more reliable. By the advent of computer’s Internet, our earth has reduced
and has attained the form of a global village.

Now we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the
other part of the world. Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities
of e-mail; we can chat for hours with our loved ones. There are plenty messenger
services in offering. With help of such services, it has become very easy to establish
a kind of global friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other
cultures of different ethnicity.

Information
Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a
virtual treasure trove of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the
sun is available on the Internet. The search engines like Google, yahoo is at your
service on the Internet. You can almost find any type of data on almost any kind of
subject that you are looking for. There is a huge amount of information available on
the internet for just about every subject known to man, ranging from government
law and services, trade fairs and conferences, market information, new ideas and
technical support, the list is end less.

Students and children are among the top users who surf the Internet for research.
Today, it is almost required that students should use the Internet for research for
the purpose of gathering resources. Teachers have started giving assignments that
require research on the Internet. Almost every coming day, researches on medical
issues become much easier to locate. Numerous web sites available on the net are
offering loads of information for people to research diseases and talk to doctors
online at sites such as, America’s Doctor. During 1998 over 20 million people
reported going online to retrieve health information.

Entertainment
Entertainment is another popular raison d'être why many people prefer to surf the
Internet. In fact, media of internet has become quite successful in trapping
multifaceted entertainment factor. Downloading games, visiting chat rooms or just
surfing the Web are some of the uses people have discovered. There are numerous
games that may be downloaded from the Internet for free. The industry of online
gaming has tasted dramatic and phenomenal attention by game lovers. Chat rooms
are popular because users can meet new and interesting people. In fact, the
Internet has been successfully used by people to find life long partners. When
people surf the Web, there are numerous things that can be found. Music, hobbies,
news and more can be found and shared on the Internet.

Services
Many services are now provided on the internet such as online banking, job seeking,
purchasing tickets for your favorite movies, guidance services on array of topics
engulfing the every aspect of life, and hotel reservations. Often these services are
not available off-line and can cost you more.

E-Commerce
Ecommerce is the concept used for any type of commercial maneuvering, or
business deals that involves the transfer of information across the globe via
Internet. It has become a phenomenon associated with any kind of shopping, almost
anything. You name it and Ecommerce with its giant tentacles engulfing every
single product and service will make you available at your door steps. It has got a
real amazing and wide range of products from household needs, technology to
entertainment.

World wide web

The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW or W3 and commonly known as the Web, is a
system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one
can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate
between them via hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, English engineer
and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now the Director of the World Wide Web
Consortium, wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide
Web.[1] At CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert
Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use "HyperText ... to link and access information of various kinds
as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will" and publicly introduced the project in
December.

"The World-Wide Web was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, and human culture,
which would allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas and all aspects of a common
project.

Electronic commerce or online commerce

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying

and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other
computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with
widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing
on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online
transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and
automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide
Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range
of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices and telephones as well.
A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items
such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the
transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers
and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce
presence on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as business-to-business

or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to
specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Electronic commerce that is
conducted between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-
consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as
Amazon.com. Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce where the buyer is directly
online to the seller's computer usually via the internet. There is no intermediary service. The sale
and purchase transaction is completed electronically and interactively in real-time such as
Amazon.com for new books. If an intermediary is present, then the sale and purchase transaction
is called electronic commerce such as eBay.com.

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists
of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business
transactions.

WHY INTERNET IS INSECURE ?

s the internet insecure because of You?

Copyright 2005 Private Mail Services

Long gone are the days that we could feel secure and know
for certain that we had privacy. With the digital age upon
us we can no longer be so sure that our privacy is secure. Recently Google has admitted their
organisation holds user data indefinitely. This causes concerns as now we know Google has
information on us that we do not want anyone to know about.

We can simply blame this all on the big corporate

companies; they seem to be a very good escape goat however, this is not the case; your privacy is
totally up to you. Certificates ensure that all the data that is transferred between you and the
internet is secure and encrypted. Recently in New Zealand there was a short certificate outage on
a banks website. During this outage only one out of 300 users took this security warning
seriously.

This is a rather large concern, as many users on the

internet have the same belief that their data is safe and secure. By the end of 2005 it is estimated
identity fraud will cause up to 5 trillion dollars world wide. We, the users of the internet must
keep ourselves safe, secure and pay attention to those security warnings. I have compiled some
good tools and tricks that will help keep you much more anonymous and secure.

1) Get rid of the internet explorer:

First and foremost Microsoft Internet Explorer is the
highest risk to your internet experience. Not only is the
most popular internet browser, but is also the most popular
for attacks from Viruses and Spyware. Internet explorer is
also too integrated with the windows operating system. Have
you ever wondered how a dialler or online casino got onto
your desktop?

I personally recommend Opera; they have a nice clean

browser. The usability is easy and best of all, it uses
tabbed browsing.

2) Protect your Connection.

Make sure you have an active firewall

operating; Firewalls
stop intruders from entering your connection and causing
havoc. Hackers can easily gain access to an unprotected
network and steal private information.

With the release of SP2 for Windows XP, Microsoft have incorporated a free personal Firewall. If
you have broadband your router should have an inbuilt Firewall, and make sure this is enabled,
Zonealarm also offer a free Firewall. You must always do what you can to protect yourself.

3) Don't share those files:

One of the most common security flaws besides running
Windows XP, is having File sharing enabled. To disable File Sharing please do the following:

Click Start Menu, select settings.

Click on Network Connections.
Right-click on the Local Area Connection icon and on the
menu that appears, choose Properties.
In the General tab under "This connection uses the
following items", highlight "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks". (If File and
Printer Sharing is not listed, then file sharing has not been setup). You may skip the rest of these
instructions.
Click Uninstall.
When you are asked if you are sure you want to Uninstall

OPERATIONAL MODEL OF DIGICASH

Abstract
This talk surveys some of the Digital Payment systems most adapted to life on the Internet. At
their best they can benefit organisations large and small, offering them payment systems with the
advantages of the Internet itself - global reach, high speed, low transaction cost and high
automatability. Some of the privacy and security risks are mentioned. Particular emphasis is
placed on the Australian context. The technologies discussed here could revolutionise the
commercial and financial systems of the world.

Contents
• Physical Payment Systems : Cash , Cheque and Credit Card
• Digital Payment Systems : Credit Cards on the Internet , the lean, e-mail-based First
Virtual's PIN System , the U.S. Automated Clearing House ACH , David Chaum's
invention DigiCash , CyberCash/CyberCoin , SET , the closed proprietary hardware and
software system Mondex , and the closed proprietary software system Open Market .
• Payment Systems Compared
• Authentication
• The Australian Options : Open Market-based systems Telstra's SureLink and Jadco's
SecurEcomm , Java Applets ABA's SecurEcommerce and Camtech's E-Commerce , and
the Digicash-based system St George's E-Cash .
• What it Costs You
• Conclusions
• Currently . . .
• References

Physical Payment Systems

These include Cash, Cheque and Credit Card. Or back to the Top . . .

Cash
The most sophisticated and efficient payment system, offered by governments to avoid
circulating gold. Transfer is instant and 100 per cent efficient. No transaction record is created.
Cash is such a tempting target for theft that it is unsafe to keep large sums in cash, or to send
cash by post.

Cheque
Banks offer safekeeping for your cash, protecting you from theft; they grant you access to your
money on your signature. A cheque, a signed instruction to pay, can be sent by post, offering
global range. The payee can be anybody, not just a business. The bank retains a record of the
amount of the transaction, but not of what item was purchased.

For the payer, cheques are slow to write. For the payee, they can bounce or be cancelled, and
take several days to clear.
Back to the Top . . .

Credit Card
The payee must be a business. The card carries a raised, embossed number. As originally
introduced, the merchant puts the card through a roller which reads the number onto a slip of
carbon paper, and the customer authorises the payment by signature. The payment cannot bounce
or be cancelled, with the bank assuming the risk, and charging the merchant several per cent
accordingly.

Mail-order merchants may ask their bank to be trusted to receive payments without any signed
authorisation; the merchant just quotes a card number and an amount and the bank just believes
them. The customer is responsible for checking their monthly account and complaining to their
bank about payments they don't remember.

Back to the Top . . .

Digital Payment Systems

These include Credit Cards on the Internet , the lean, e-mail-based First Virtual's PIN System ,
the U.S. Automated Clearing House ACH , David Chaum's invention DigiCash ,
CyberCash/CyberCoin , SET , the closed proprietary hardware and software system Mondex ,
and the closed proprietary software system Open Market .

Back to the Top . . .

Credit Cards on the Internet

It's a bad deal for the merchant, because the merchant gets to see thousands of live credit card
numbers, and is under suspicion every time there is fraud on any of them.

It's a bad deal for the consumer, beacause their money is spent without their say-so.

The Bank guarantees the transaction and thus incurs significant risks; the insurance and policing
tasks then become chargeable services, that the bank on-sells to merchants and consumers.

Most of the remaining systems are designed to add encryption to the Credit Card infrastructure to
allow the consumer to initiate the transaction, and to keep the card number away from the
merchant. This cuts out the risks to the merchant and consumer; but because there is no
signature, the consumer can still repudiate the transaction and frequently does. The bank still
bears this risk and charges for it.

First Virtual's PIN System

This is a very elegant, well conceived, low-tech system, built on top of the Credit Card
infrastructure. It avoids card numbers ever being sent over the Internet or disclosed to merchants,
and it allows the purchaser to confirm the payment. The purchaser must be reachable by e-mail.
Amazingly, it uses no encryption, so it has no problems with the U.S. munition export laws.

The customer gives their card number to the First Virtual Bank by phoning up a particular
number and typing it into a touch phone. In return they are assigned a PIN password. The
merchant must be registered with First Virtual, and must have a bank account able to accept
payments by the ACH (Automated Clearing House) system; that is to say, a U.S. bank account.

When the customer makes an order, they give the merchant their PIN password. The merchant
then contacts First Virtual, quotes them the PIN and asks for the money. First Virtual send the
customer an e-mail asking for their OK. The customer replies either "Yes", "No" or "Fraud", and
if the reply is "Yes" the transaction goes through.

Back to Digital Payment Systems . . .

ACH
Merchants and consumers in the U.S. may gain direct access to the Automated Clearing House
system used to transfer money between banks. CheckFree of Ohio interfaces with PC financial
packages such as Quicken to allow consumers to make payments, and CheckFree's Gateway
system allows U.S. merchants direct access to the ACH, over the Internet using PGP, for 27
cents per payment.

Back to Digital Payment Systems . . .

DigiCash
Developed by Dr David Chaum, sold by DigiCash BV in Amsterdam. The consumer downloads
the DigiCash software to run a digital wallet, opens an account with the local mint. The mint
could be run by a government or a bank; DigiCash BV is in the process of signing up numerous
banks to run mints (this is reminiscent of the situation in Australia last century where banks
issued their own banknotes).

The user creates some "coins" and gets them signed by the mint. The wallet can exchange coins
with other wallets using a custom IP protocol; coins can also be sent in text form by e-mail or
other means. When desired, they can be cashed in again at the mint.

The payer knows the identity of the payee, but the payee does not find out the identity of the
payer (unless the payer attempts to double-spend a coin).

DigiCash is the basis for the St George Bank's eCash offering.

Back to Digital Payment Systems . . .

CyberCash / CyberCoin
CyberCash is a system which uses public-key cryptography to leverage credit cards onto the
Internet, and CyberCoin is an extension of CyberCash to allow small-value transactions.

The consumer downloads the CyberCash digital wallet software, and enrols their credit card with
the wallet, and with CyberCash; they may also open a CyberCoin account and move some
money into it. The wallet registers itself as a helper application for Netscape or Internet Explorer.

When the consumer approves a transaction, an encrypted payment order is sent to the merchant,
who adds some payment information, signs the order, and forwards it to the CyberCash gateway.
The merchant never sees the consumer's credit card number.

Back to Digital Payment Systems . . .

SET
The Secure Electronic Transaction protocol is being developed by MasterCard, Visa and various
computer companies, in order to transmit payment information over the Internet. It can not be
used to encrypt other messages, and provides no privacy to the transaction details, so the U.S.
State Department has deigned to grant export permission to some SET implementations. It is
hoped that SET will eventually be built into many "commercial products". Merchants (and in
Mastercard's implementation also consumers) must have digital certificates signed by their
banks.

Functionally, SET works in a similar way to CyberCash, except that the acquiring bank can, at
its option, also inform the merchant of the card number. Thus SET does not necessarily improve
the customer's security much, as compared with sending the card number in plain text.

If the consumer does have a digital certificate, they cannot then repudiate the transaction. Banks
are very keen to see non-repudiation implemented, because it cuts out their major overhead in the
credit card system.

See www.setco.org

Mondex
Modex is not an Internet payment system, but it is quite widespread; it is a closed proprietary
system involving smart cards which communicate using a secret protocol.

The consumer "refills" their card at a specially equipped ATM machine, and purchases can be
made by inserting the card into a "Mondex wallet" or by using a proprietary Mondex telephone.
Mondex is used in a pilot project in Swindon, England, and campus-wide at the universities of
Exeter and York. There have been trials in Hong Kong, Canada, and San Francisco. In
November 1996, MasterCard International purchased 51 per cent of Mondex.

Back to Digital Payment Systems . . .

Open Market
Open Market has been granted U.S. patent number 5,724,424 which is a complex patent
incorprating 58 separate claims, including :

• the use of an open network to transfer funds from buyer to merchant with a "financial
authorisation network" as intermediary
• the display of "digital advertisements"
• the use of the Internet to grant authorisation for credit or debit card payments.

Their principal products are aimed only at Internet Commerce :

Transact
Transact is run by CSP's (Commerce Service Providers) such as Telstra and Jadco to
provide the interface to the financial system.
SecureLink
SecureLink is high-added-value system which bundles an uplink to the CSP together with
a shopping cart application, into a package which is very convenient for the small
merchant. There is built-in support for hardgoods, softgoods, and subscriptions to
softgoods.

SMART CARD

A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC), is any pocket-
sized card with embedded integrated circuits. There are two broad categories
of ICCs. Memory cards contain only non-volatile memory storage
components, and perhaps dedicated security logic. Microprocessor cards
contain volatile memory and microprocessor components. The card is made
of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes acrylonitrile butadiene
styrene or polycarbonate . Smart cards may also provide strong security
authentication for single sign-on (SSO) within large organizations.

Benefits

Smart cards can provide identification, authentication, data storage and application processing.[1]

The benefits of smart cards are directly related to the volume of information and applications that
are programmed for use on a card. A single contact/contactless smart card can be programmed
with multiple banking credentials, medical entitlement, driver’s license/public transport
entitlement, loyalty programs and club memberships to name just a few. Multi-factor and
proximity authentication can and has been embedded into smart cards to increase the security of
all services on the card. For example, a smart card can be programed to only allow a contactless
transaction if it is also within range of another device like a uniquely paired mobile phone. This
can significantly increase the security of the smart card.

Governments gain a significant enhancement to the provision of publicly funded services

through the increased security offered by smart cards. These savings are passed onto society
through a reduction in the necessary funding or enhanced public services.

Individuals gain increased security and convenience when using smart cards designed for
interoperability between services. For example, consumers only need to replace one card if their
wallet is lost or stolen. Additionally, the data storage available on a card could contain medical
information that is critical in an emergency should the card holder allow access to this

EDI

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations
by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one
computer system to another computer system, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading
partner without human intervention.

It is more than mere e-mail; for instance, organizations might replace bills of lading and even
cheques with appropriate EDI messages. It also refers specifically to a family of standards.

In 1996, the National Institute of Standards and Technology defined electronic data interchange
as "the computer-to-computer interchange of strictly formatted messages that represent
documents other than monetary instruments. EDI implies a sequence of messages between two
parties, either of whom may serve as originator or recipient. The formatted data representing the
documents may be transmitted from originator to recipient via telecommunications or physically
transported on electronic storage media." It distinguishes mere electronic communication or data
exchange, specifying that "in EDI, the usual processing of received messages is by computer
only. Human intervention in the processing of a received message is typically intended only for
error conditions, for quality review, and for special situations. For example, the transmission of
binary or textual data is not EDI as defined here unless the data are treated as one or more data
elements of an EDI message and are not normally intended for human interpretation as part of
online data processing." [1]

EDI can be formally defined as the transfer of structured data, by agreed message standards,
from one computer system to another without human intervention