Source: Business University

Wi-Fi is gaining popularity in almost every city in the country all thanks to its low cost implementation and ease to use. Cafe, fast food restaurant and even bank outlets are armed with Wi-Fi connectivity for the convenience of their customers to access to the Internet. All the customer need is to have Wi-Fi device. Home users too, are beginning to switch their home network into a wireless network. This is could eliminate they problem of buying LAN cables and finding suitable place to put it before any mishap of tripping someone.

Source: Home-Network-Help

However, most home user wireless network are without any security. Without security enabled in the wirless network, any Tom and Harry with a Wi-Fi device could happily access to the home network and gaining the Internet Access with a click of scanning on surrounding networks. According to My E-commerce blog, there were several cases in UK where the offender is found guilty in tapping his neighbour's Internet connection via Wi-Fi laptop. Hence, the question arises whether the responsibility of user to protect their own network or it is fall in the hands of the Internet Service Provider.

I personally believe that Malaysian users need to be aware of the importance of security in their Wi-Fi. A quick scan on Bandar Sungai Long using my N95Most users often neglect the instruction given by the Internet Service Provider to place at least a WEP password either in their wireless router. A user must choose a strong password or otherwise a hacker could gain access to the wireless network easily. Besides, users should equipped themselves a firewall software to moniter any unauthorized inbound connections. For a tighter security, one could switch off the broadcasting of the SSID through the router configuration or block any unidentifiable MAC address that are accessing to the home network. Finally, a user should change the administration password for the access to the router configuration. All these steps should be taken in reducing the vulnerability of the wireless home network.

Related Links:

• Wireless Security
• Two cautioned over Wi-Fi theft

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Electronic currency or cashless transactions are transactions done or made electronically without the use of cash. Usually, users of electronic currency are provided with a plastic card with an electronic chip embedded on top of it to keep track the amount of cash stored in the card. These cards are the various forms of electronic currency can be used for purchasing items from a local shop, retailer, bookstore, petrol station and airport around the world that supports electronic currency technology in lieu of cash. In addition, consumers are able to use electronic currency to purchase items through the Internet.

There are several types of electronic currency cards, such as Debit Card, Credit Card and Touch n’ Go Card.

A Debit Card has a certain amount of money stored in the card by the user. When a user made a transaction, the amount of expenses made is usually deducted from the money stored in the card. Some debit card act as an ATM card where the amount of purchase is directly deducted in the user’s bank account. This allows the user to use the Debit Card to withdraw money from any ATM machines.

A Credit Card allows a user to purchase items in credit and made the payment to the bank after a period of time (usually a month). The disadvantage of Credit Card is high interest will be charged upon late payments.

A Touch n' Go usually acts as a prepaid card and the value of the card is depending how much a user wanted to top up with the minimum amount of RM10. Touch n' Go card are usually limited to pay transportation fees such as RapidKL, KTM, Kelana Jaya Rail Line, Ampang Rail Line and selected car parks like One Utama and Jaya One that supports the Touch n' Go payment.

 AirCash, M-Money and DiGiREMIT

In Malaysia, the three major mobile phone service providers, Celcom, Maxis and DiGi unveiled a mobile service that allows the user to deposit cash into a virtual account and transfer money locally and internationally. This service is also known as AirCash (Celcom), M-Money (Maxis) or DiGiREMIT (DiGi). This service is recently launched by Celcom but both Maxis and DiGi has this similar service 2 years back. The user is only required to possess a mobile phone device and register the service to the respective mobile service provider. Once the user is registered, the user is able to transfer the money from the bank account to the virtual account. In addition, the user could use the money in the virtual account to transfer money and purchase item such as grocery, petrol, books and others with the maximum limit of RM1,500. The entire process of transferring money and purchasing items are done digitally without the use of physical cash. Parents who have children studying abroad will be happy to have this service and it save them the trouble of using the bank to transfer money. Foreign workers could take this advantage to send money back to their home.

Thus, as we could see that electronic currency has beginning to play a crucial role in our life as it brought both convenience and security on using money. Instead of risking our safety by stuffing a wallet filled with cash to shop or transfer money, all we need is just a card or a mobile phone to do the job.

Related Links:

• Celcom Expects 500,000 AirCash Subscribers By Year-end
• Maxis Unveils Cell Phone Money Transfer
• DiGiREMIT – Money Transfer by Mobile Phone

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We are living in a digital world. We use emails and messenger to keep in touch with our friends and families. We upload images to social sites such as Facebook and Friendster. We do Internet banking. We purchase online flight tickets. We even shop online. As we slowly shifting our daily interaction or activities from the physical world into the digital world, how sure are we that our data is securely transfer? Or are we risking our privacy for the sake of convenience?

Image adapted from Jackson Benefit Group LLC

Like the physical world, there are many bad people in the digital world as well. They are interested in causing trouble to us by hacking into our account and take advantage of our private information for other malicious intention. So, if we are equipped with a weak password, those nasty intruders would able to guess our password without using any sophisticated tracking tools. Even if we are armed with a military-grade password, those genius intruder able to affix a bug or tracking device under our keyboards or simply create a phishing site to lure us into their trap, thus revealing our precious password to them.

Even we are sending emails, the process of sending the mail to the recipient could be tapped and confidential data could be leaked at the hands of the hacker. When we signed into our messenger, various messengers-ads will pop-up sent by our friends who are actually a victim of the messenger-spam chain, which includes advertisements or phishing sites to lure curious users to click the links. When we clicked the link, we actually downloading the malicious software and with the help self-installation, the "spy bug" will be installed into our computer. The spy bug will trace our log in information and password, thus giving it the access to send various fake ads links to our friends in the contact list. Some sophisticated spy bugs are even able to access to your email system and send fake ads links to all the friends in your address book. With the recent feature of allowing users to send offline message, these spy bug took the advantage to nag users by sending offline ads links.

 

A Real Life Example of Messenger SPAM

Click Image to Enlarge

It is human nature to keep things in the cupboard or storage area for future use. It is the same in the digital world. We do backup of precious photos, documents and videos to the Internet, trusting our Internet will be the secure and perfect storage area. Unlike in the physical world where we could lock in with padlocks, padlocks in digital world could be easily hacked if we have a weak password. Once our information are uploaded to the Internet, we are actually making them more vulnerable as the Internet makes our data easily accessable to anyone. Even we do trust our government in safeguarding our personal information, cases such as the biggest identity theft occurred in London where the tax authority had lost the data of 25 million people makes us doubtful on how far we can trust the level of security of the Internet in protecting our data.

Furthermore, with the increasing popularity of doing online transaction, more and more users prefer to shop or perform online banking through the Internet. However, with the high intelligence of the hackers, they are capable to duplicate the same website you used to shop, which you could easily submitting confidential data to these hackers. Hackers usually take opportunity when there is a seasonal hikes in the usage of online transaction, for example Transformer 2 release. A hacker could easily duplicate a cinema website and publish them at the convenience of the customers. Its like setting up a trap, waiting for desperate customers to fall into the trap.

GSC Temporary Site (on the first week of Transformer 2 launch): Potential Target for Phishing Site
Click Image to Enlarge

With so much vulnerabilities in the Internet, are we going to un-plug our Internet lines and remain shut forever in the offline world? Of course not. We have to take security measures to ensure our vulnerable data are safe from any potential hackers. To protect ourselves and our data, please read the post on Ways To Safeguard Our Personal Data by Dillen, or find out more about Phishing Sites by Kaw and the advantages of 3rd Party Security Certificates by Ally. With these security measurement taken, we could at least reduce the probability of our precious information being leaked out to the public.

Related Links:

1. Data Vulnerability is a Systemic Problem
2. How Safe is Our Personal Data?

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Google, the world most popular web search engine, which its revenue are mainly dominated from web ads through Google Adsense. Google, as a successful E-Commerce company does not stop at developing a better search engine. Google wants the public to get a taste of cloud computing application with Google Docs, an online office suite that able user to view and edit documents, PDFs, presentation slides and spreadsheets. This allows Google to compete with its rival, Microsoft Office in the offline world. However, Microsoft recently unveiled Microsoft Office Livespace to allow user to upload and edit document via Internet. In addition, Google Docs allows multiple users to edit the documents simultaneously. It also encourages multiple users to collaborate together to share and manage the documents or databases. Google’s main goal is to make information easy available to the Internet and make universally accessible and useful. This has lead the creation of Google Web Picasa (photo-sharing site), Google Earth, Google Maps and Orkut, which enable users to share information anywhere with an Internet access.

    

Furthermore, Google also develop Enterprise Search. Like Google web search engine, it indexes specific content across the enterprise with the help of BearingPoint, a Google partner. BearingPoint also assisted Google to extend its search engine capabilities to several specific industries. The Enterprise Search could be integrated with other applications to improve performance and accurate results. With the integration, it able to access to specific enterprise information such as budgets, financial analysts, annual reports, metrics and other business events.

Enterprise search is successful implemented into a not-for-profit medical company called Kaiser Permanente. It helps the company to indexes all the medical records, diagnostics, education and medical material to the staff. Doctors can now diagnose and specify treatment with the help of the search engine.

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Hi. I am an ordinary youth who is mainly attracted to technological stuff. Here's a brief story that most my friends asked me about, "How do you get to know so much about computers?"

Around the time I was in Primary School, my family received an Apple computer from my aunt who stayed in the States. That's my very first approach on computer. Of course, during that era a computer is not as user friendly as today's "click (or touch) and go" concept. I can still remember that before booting up the computer, I have to insert a 1.44MB floppy disk into the computer's mouth to start up the operating system. Then, if I want to play any games in the computer I have swap diskettes into the computer. I was fortunate that my aunt supplied me an album of diskettes of games. The computer on that time was very fragile and I can't leave it on for more than an hour. There is once I was playing Othello in the Apple and was slightly addicted to the game, and I smelt a burning smell. I thought it was something burning in the kitchen. I just about to leave the computer desk to check out the kitchen, I stared at the little puff smoke that abruptly puffing from the computer monitor. Without second thought, I switched off the main power supply. This is the first computer I ever damage. There are total of five damages I have done to my house computer, mainly two are deadly and unrecoverable. I shall reserve the explanation for later time.

Besides, damaging computer as my main hobby, I love to browse and surf the Internet to fulfill my thirst of knowledge. Here are my top 5 list:

1) Smashing Magazine (where I look for inspiration)

2) Sony Music Japan (to listen the latest J-music)

3) Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows (to see what's Microsoft up to)

4) OneManga (reading comics at my leisure time)

5) Google (the gate to the infinite of data)

Furthermore, I also like to design wallpaper as well as simply adopt and adapt the tutorials from the net on designing wallpapers and digital card. So far I have participate on the designing the Accounting Society's Pangkor Trip poster and the Wushu Camp poster.

Once again, to all readers I hope you enjoy your stay~

=)

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