E-commerce security issues

Ana is a shopping addict and a lazy mammal as well. So it’s quite ironic thinking about her walking along malls with high-heeled shoes and macro mini skirt. She can never bear a long walk on the street nor carry her shopping bags. Needless to say, they’re not that rich to hire a helper that would carry her bags with her. But then, just recently, I realized that the way she dresses isn’t that eye-catching anymore. Thus, I, curious as I was, asked her why. Then, I discovered that she was just shopping through the net. However, when she purchased a pair of slippers, she was shocked to discover that after she pushed on her private key, another user claimed what she purchased prior to her. From then on, she had never purchased stuffs from the net again.

My cousin’s former way of shopping is often termed as E-commerce. E-commerce is an abbreviation for electronic-commerce.  It is a way of doing transactions when the merchant and the customer are too far away to meet.  Just like any other business transactions, it involves the selection of goods by the customer through virtual browsing and the payment of goods. As the name goes, it operates via the Internet to exchange, access and capture data.

E-commerce is often considered a fascination for individuals who find the World Wide Web an easy access to shopping. I wouldn’t blame them since, basically, E-commerce is designed for a more comfortable and stress-free purchase of products or services. Neither I nor many of my acquaintances shop or negotiate through the net, yet, upon hearing what had happened to my cousin, I feel there’s a great need for me to discuss the major issue often disregarded by people who are oriented with E-commerce. Moreover, with regards to my cousin-in-law’s experience, I think what concerns us are the security issues involved within E-commerce.

One of the major concerns on e-commerce security is privacy. The lack of privacy on the Internet is a major concern to many consumers. Since the world wide web is accessible to many and hackers are widespread, there's a big possibility that any private key given to any consumers will be accessed by any of these so-called hackers. If this is so, not only my cousin can experience the same problem on E-commerce but a lot of Internet users as well.

To solve this very issue, I recommend encryption. In ecryption, information or data is converted into a cipher or code to prevent unauthorized access. I recommend this, since it affords a large degree of privacy and anonymity. Since decrypting devices are now available, if we want to impose encryption, there is a need to seta world wide standard for encryption.