How to Make Credit Card Purchases Safer – Banks, Are You Paying Attention

Do you worry about the security of your credit card information when you provide it to lesser known merchants to make payments ? Do you worry that the information you provide to well known major merchants could be stolen as their databases are hacked as seems to happen regularly ? Do you wonder why merchants need to have access your credit card information ?

What if when you went to pay for goods online, or using merchant point of sale terminals, you were diverted to your bank’s credit card site where you could make payment using a secure transaction and have the bank send confirmation to the merchant that payment was made, without having to provide any personal financial information to the merchant. For recurring payments like monthly service fees the bank could provide an ongoing confirmation that expires on a date set by the purchaser. Would that make you feel more comfortable and more secure ?

I refuse to believe that in this day and age the technology to do this does not exist and I refuse to believe that nobody has thought of this before. I can only wonder who profits from retaining the current unsafe and insecure system for making credit card purchases.

Banks and credit card companies, are you paying attention ?

Facebook: From Networking to Marketing

Facebook began at Harvard University and was soon opened up to all universities, university students and alumni. It was a wonderful networking tool for the academic community.

But it was not to remain so. As it’s income generating potential became known it’s creators positioned it as a marketing tool by opening it up to the whole world, making it just another MySpace, though perhaps more sophisticated and certainly with more business savvy.

The transformation from a networking site to a marketing site came with the policy of allowing others to run applications on top of Facebook, virtually selling you, your personal information, and your list of friends to outside marketers. Thousands of these applications have been implemented on Facebook.

Jennifer LaBorde, of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Advance Titan writes that ”Facebook applications disguise immoral advertising business”.

Between the Lines at ZDNet states that this can be “downright dangerous”.

The newest Facebook application that has raised the most concern is called Beacon and it will tell your friends what you buy online (and it automatically opts you into the application). Simon Barrett of Blogger News Network writes that privacy experts are concerned that Facebook may have crossed the line from being social to being invasive.

But perhaps more troubling are concerns raised by TechCrunch that Facebook is censoring search results for political reasons.

I remember when the Internet was non-commercial and primarily an academic network with public access via Freenets, such as the Cleveland Freenet, the world’s first Freenet, and the National Capital FreeNet of which I was ”one of the first information providers”, as organizations and individuals who provided information via the Freenets and Internet were then called. The Internet was very much a networking tool at that stage - for academics, public interest organizations and individuals.

I remember the concerns being raised when it was first proposed that commercial use of the Internet be allowed, because” in the beginning” business was not allowed on the Internet. As one who shared those concerns I was relieved to find that, for the most part, business use of the net has been positive, providing useful resources to the public and customers.

However concerns have been raised lately about the corporate interests that control the hardware networks that the Internet runs on favouring certain commercial users over the broader public interest. This is a concept known as net neutrality.

I use the Internet for social networking, primarily through mountain biking and photography sites that operate on a membership fee or donation funding basis.

This blog is on a commercial site, but there is no intrusion on the blog itself except for the compulsory task bar at the top. Though advertising options are made available that would provide revenue to me and the service owner (Google) I have not been required to have any advertising on my blog.

It would be nice to see a real social networking site for the academic community - universities, professors, students and alumni. It could be developed by the open software community, hosted co-operatively on the university networks and maintained by volunteers.

With Facebook the original purpose has become secondary to generating revenues for it’s owners. Facebook has become the worst of capitalism on the net and I call on all progressive Internet users to BOYCOTT FACEBOOK.

Privacy Rights – Where Do We Draw The Lines - Questions

Are we too concerned about privacy. Has the concept of privacy gone too far. Do we really have a right to anonymity. When is it acceptable for authorities to ask us to prove who we are. These issues arise in all sorts of social and political contexts.

Do people who work for public agencies – people who work for us – have a right to refuse to let the public know what they are being paid on our behalf.

What about complaints by drivers about red light cameras that catch them in public breaking the law. Do they have a right to be concerned about people finding out where they were, when they were in a public place. Do people have a right to “freedom from embarrassment”.

If we can be freely seen in a public place is being videotaped or photographed in that place an invasion of privacy.

Should police be able to stop all black men and request identification if a black man has committed a crime in that area. Do police ever stop all tall men when a tall man has committed a crime in the area. How do we differentiate between racial profiling and stopping people that match the description of a suspect.

Would we all be better off if authorities could use the best technology available to identify people, such as fingerprints, Iris scans or DNA (can we separate medical from identifying information in a DNA sample). Should we all have our identification data on the public record.

If travellers are subjected to inappropriate treatment due to misidentification, or having similar names to other people, are more accurate identification methods such as fingerprinting or iris scans actually less intrusive than comparing names or photographs.

Should we worry about Internet financial transactions but freely give our VISA number to anyone working in a restaurant or gas station.

Should we require photo identification to vote. Does it matter that many poor and disadvantaged people don’t have photo ID because they don’t vote anyway.