Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

There are several antifraud measures can be used as the protection measures when consumer participating in an e-auction. An escrow service is one of the popular measures. Escrow.com

reduces the potential risk of fraud by acting as a trusted third that collects, holds, and sends a buyer's money to a seller according to instructions agreed on by both the buyer and seller. Typically, once the buyer receives and approves the item from the seller within an agreed time frame, the escrow service then sends the payment to the seller.

Escrow.com is the recommended transaction settlement service of many of the top names in e-Commerce, including eBay and eBay Motors. Escrow services are provided by a licensed and regulated escrow company. Government agencies perform regular audits of independently licensed escrow companies. The audit examinations serve to protect public funds, determine safety and soundness of operations and determine compliance with escrow statutes and regulations. It also governs under the Escrow Law.

Beside, the Feedback Forum is the place to learn about your trading partners, view their reputations, and express your opinions by leaving feedback on your transactions. Such member-to-member comments help the millions of buyers and sellers in the community build trust and share their trading experiences with others. Therefore, consumer may make their purchases decision base on the multiple feedbacks from buyers to a seller.

Authentication service is to determine whether an item is genuine based on an independent authenticator's physical inspection and described appropriately. It is a way of confirm the identity and evaluate the condition of an item. Third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purpose. It provides a way of tracking an item if it charges ownership in future. There are companies that provide this specialized services, we should find the right type of expertise.

Review a local E-commerce Site

Blooming Florist began operations in 1981. Through the years, it has grown from a small retail shop to six retail outlets, and Blooming is also networked with 75,000 florists worldwide through its membership in Interflora Pacific Unit Limited. Their services and products include floral fresh cut flowers for all occasions, especial in Roses , Tulips, Gerberas, Lilies and Heliconias, and also have flower and fruits, fruit baskets, hampers, gifts, cakes and candies.

Through to visit the Blooming Florist site, we can identify what product them service for and all the picture had been decorate nicely and each product stated with a standard price. Beside that, the shopping card process is standard and it is convenience to consumers take order. However consumers can choose different option payment such as through online banking, mobile payment or credit card, in state it provide secure payment of verified by visa/master card. Futhermore, its also had provided the products search engine, customer service such as payment methods, delivery service, refund policy etc, information about Blooming Florist, etc.

Consumers not only order the purchase through network, but also Blooming Florist has provided “Live Support” service that will have operators to take your call and order. At the end, Blooming Florist had a “World Delivery, Satisfaction Guaranteed” services through internet to consumers. Importantly, all the transaction payment is in RM (Ringgit Malaysia).

Corporate Blogging

A corporate blog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. There are 2 major types of corporate blogs, which are either external or internal.

Internal blogs
An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation’s intranet, only allowed employee to view and access. These blogs may encourage the employee participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence, direct communicating between various layer of an organization and a sense of community.

External blogs
An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons can share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products). It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases. Besides, it is better than the press release as it allowed to post the comment by the reader.

One of the corporate blog example is Yahoo! Search blog. As Yahoo! prepares to support standards, like RDFa for example, we've continued to work closely with the best and brightest in the semantic markup community. Click here to look more detail about the Yahoo! Implementation.

Although there are debates on whether CEOs should blog or not, blogging among CEOs is becoming popular. (Top 10 CEOs Blogs)

Pros and Cons
The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads.

However, having a blog may be important to a technology-based company such as Apple or Microsoft, but it does not means that it is same important to other company that are lack of used of the technology. Besides, the irritated discussion forum may occur, if the reader may post or reply something slanderous in an unprofessional manner. For more detail about pros and cons, click here.

For more information:

Top 15 Corporate blogs

The Corporate Blogs List

Why corporate blogs

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

The Government has implemented government operation internally, as well as how it delivers services to people of Malaysia through launched the Electronic Government in order to lead the country into Information Age. It brings potential for better growth as to provide a better service to the public. E-Government has introduced e-Filling, Renewing Road Tax and Driving License online, KWSP’s i-Akaun and E-Perolehan. Others than that, the Government has defined seven innovative Flagship Application in order to accelerate Malaysia’s vision 2020.

Problems:

1. Lack of acceptance on Malaysian. There are some problems may faced by users where Malaysians may feels distrust on banking online or buying from an internet store like very unsecured transaction during performing with another party through a computer. There should provide more government staff to consult the citizens and explain how to use the e-government services in the safety way.

2. Language barrier. There is a problem on English language is most using for the government websites. For those citizens is lacks in English language where they will not perceive to attempt on it. The government website should be in different version language in order to take care the minor who do not or not proficient in English language.

3. Lack of public awareness. Majority of the citizens are not aware of the services offered due to the government less of promoting the services. The government should increase awareness of the citizens through TV advertisement, organizing workshops at shopping mall.

4. Lack of IT knowledge. The Malaysian not every one has IT knowledge so it is hard to handle on the technical problem aroused. They will feel it brings problem more than benefits the users. Thus, most of users more likely involves in physical attend on the making every transaction with the physical medium not through internet medium. The industry should have consultant in order to promote the e-features when the user is doing any transaction at your place or to supervise every step in performing transaction to user.