Things to Take Note to Prevent E-auction Fraud When A Consumer Participating in An E-Auction

E-auctions is an electronic "reverse" auction where suppliers use internet-based software to bid against each other online and in real time against a published specification. E-auctions can be based on price alone or can use transformational bidding to account for other criteria such as quality and delivery. E-auctions are most often used in the final stages of the procurement where all "non-price" factors have already been agreed like quality evaluation and terms and conditions.

E-auctions work best where:

• the requirement is of sufficient size to attract competition
• the requirement can be accurately specified
• there is a competitive market

Types of e-auction fraud:

• Bid shielding: Used by buyers to push down the price
  
• Shilling: Used by sellers to push up the price
  
• Fake photos and misleading descriptions
• Improper grading techniques
• Bid siphoning
• Selling reproductions
• Failure to pay
• Failure to pay the auction house
• High shipping costs and handling fees
• Lose and damage claims
• Fake Escrow Services
• Switch and return
• Other frauds
  

Protecting against e-auction fraud:

1. User identity verification: Verifying users' identification to ensure their validity. E.g. IC number, driver's license number, date of birth
2. Authentication services: Verifying identity of a party who generated some data, and of the integrity if the data, and to determine whether an item is genuine and described appropriately.
3. Grading Services: To determine the physical condition of an item.
   
4. Feedback: A way for participants in a transaction to rate one another and for others to see those ratings. And a large percentage of negative feedbacks is a clear signal to stay away from a particular seller.
5. Insurance Policy: Some sites (Amazon.com) provide insurance on auction frauds but extra cost is incurred.
6. Escrow Service: To avoid being deceived by fraudulent email, choose to pay or be paid through an Escrow Service, that both buyers and sellers in a deal are protected with a independent third party. This third party will verify the payment from the buyer and inform the seller. This third party will also hold onto the money from buyer until confirmation is received from buyer to pay seller.
7. Nonpayment Punishment: A friendly warning for first-time offense, sterner warning for second-time offense, a 30-day suspension for a third-time offense, an indefinite suspension for a fourth-time offense to protect sellers.
8. Item Verification: It provides a way of tracking an item if it charges ownership in future. Neutral third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means.
   

☆Review ~ on a post on Legal from My-Commerce blog☆

At the present time, cyber cafes can be found in every residential area and it is the teenage lover place, especially for male. It are included few more reason that why they like to go cyber cafes, but the most important factor affect them go to cyber cafes is playing online game. Some people feel that their home internet speed no enough rapidly to play online game. Other than that, some game required to build a team and play together, so they will meet at the same time in cyber cafes. Teenage people easily wallow in the online gaming world, so they need some rule to control them.

Therefore, Housing and Local Government Minister said the ruling, stated that Cyber Café operators required to take down particulars of their customers who use the computers to surf the Internet, was to ensure that the facilities at the cafes were not misused to spread false information through the Internet. Operators who failed to maintain the record book or did not record down the details could lose their operating license, but they really will do it step by step? The rules are really useful in our country? It is the big question for us to think about it. Last time, government said that the student wear the uniform cannot go into cyber cafes, but the operator will provide you a t-shirt to change the cloth. Further more, some of the cyber cafes even openly let the students with uniform go into there, and when have any spot check from the police the operator even help the students to left the cyber café.

Other than that, I very agree with some rule especially is cyber café banned from using tinted glasses. It is because it can let the public clearly seen that what happening inside the shop. Some more if really any incident happen in the shop, public can clearly seen what is going on, is that need help and this is protect ourselves. Besides, the forth rule of those under 12 years old must be accompanied by parents or guardian and only allowed to stay up to 10.00pm, cyber cafes actually are the place quite complicated, the people under 12 years old should have an adult can guide for them, can prevent that student waste time on surfing net and won’t do some illegal activities.

In conclusion, the government need always go to check the cyber café to make sure there are follow the rules. This just can decrease the social problem in the residential area and increase the number of customer goes to spend money at there. This is “sure win” for all people.

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

E-government is the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses and other arms of government. For example, e-government seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility ad quality of interaction.

The implementation of E-government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysian government. The status of e-government implementation in Malaysia is widely discussed as to the potential of e-government implementation towards the public and businesses.

E-government is one of the seven flagship application introduced in MSC. The E-government project are:

1. E-Syariah
2. Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX)
3. Electronic Procurement (eP)
4. Electronic Services Delivery (eServices)
5. Generic Office Environment (GOE)
6. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
7. Project Monitoring System (PMS)

Besides that, that still have other project such as EG Net, EG IT Standards, Integration projects among flagships and legacy, PKI and Digital Signature and Shared Services outfit (SSO).

The implementation of e-government would bring benefits to public administration and also Malaysian society. For example, e-government improves efficiency since the use of information technology enables improvement in mass processing tasks and public administration operations.

However, e-government still have problem in implementation :

1. Language Barrier
2. Lack of public awareness
3. Online Behavior
4. Technological Barrier

The e-government citizen's adoption strategies are:

• Increase awareness through TV and radio advertisements and organizing workshops at shopping malls.
• Provide consultation services on how to use those services.
• Provide websites with multiple language version.
• Simplify procures needed to access to the e-government services.
• Require citizens show higher levels of satisfaction with the online service provided by the government. A higher level of customer satisfaction will increase the rate of e-government adoption

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

In order to maintain a competitive edge, corporations are increasingly looking for opportunities to make them stand out. After some initial hesitancy, corporations are slowly starting to realize that it is important to jump on the virtual bandwagon of blogging. This medium represents the missing ingredient that traditional media lacks: the ability to directly connect a company to its customers.

A corporate blog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Recently, all major browsers (including Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 7) support RSS technology, which is very useful for low-volume blogs.

Why is Blogging Crucial to Corporations??

A corporate blog can be:

• A tool that helps the organization achieve a business goal- Redeploying scare resources just to have a blog makes no sense if there is no business case for one.
• A useful extension of the company image in the marketplace- It is however no substitute for bad products or lack of commitment to customers.

• An opportunity to open a two-way channel between employees and customers.

It all comes down to practicing a natural and responsible human voice, one that companies may have discouraged by publishing and enforcing overly strict rules and policies not updated to change with the times. The easiest path for companies to rationalize starting a blog is for the purpose of sharing information on products and services.

For a New Relationship with Customers

Corporate blogs are not only interesting and useful, they are also helping the companies that author them develop a totally new relationship with their customers. In some cases, the blogs have helped the company move the needle in reputation, likability and thus purchase consideration.

1. Direct2Dell- this team is extremely plugged in the social media in general. The about statement is right in the banner:" A blog about Dell products, services, and customers".
2. Google Blog, the official- with 619,000 RSS subscribers and a very extensive blog roll.
3. Baby Babble by Stony field Farm- a company that provides content on child health advice.
   

Related Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/15/a-guide-to-corporate-blogging/
http://www.conversationagent.com/2008/02/corporate-blogs.html