Credit Cards Debts: Causes and Prevention

1:48 AM / Posted by phaikyin@snowyin / comments (4)

Hi, everyone! This week article is on one of people’s major concern which is credit cards debts. Credit cards are very common in this century. According to Wikipedia, it is a part of payment system which uses a small plastic card for payment. The issuer of cards allows the user to borrow money to pay for goods or services to the merchant in advance.






Credit cards can be very convenient if it is used properly, otherwise, you’ll be surrounded by load of debts which may cause bankruptcy. I’ll share some of the causes and prevention of the credit cards debts in this article.


Maintaining expenses on a reduced income- Excessive spending is one of the main causes, especially when users are experiencing reduction in their monthly income. If users still spend as if they are having their previous income, they will soon find that their credit cards’ monthly charges will be doubled or tripled up. A fast and effective way to prevent this is creating a new budget which can get your spending under control. Users will have a clear view on how much money they have each month and how many they need to spend for the month.



Low or no savings- It is important to contribute money to the savings account regularly. However, if you’re contributing very little or no fund to savings account, your savings may not able to cover unexpected or emergency expenses. An easy way to prevent from adding charges to credit cards during emergency is set up an automatic monthly transfer to your savings account. With this system, you would not need to worry that you will forget to set your funds aside.

Poor money management- Money management includes everything from monthly budgeting to bill paying to savings and investment contributions. Therefore, failing to manage any of the areas will cause you to loss control on your finance. For instance, if you fail to pay your monthly credit card bills, you will be charged for late payment at substantially high interest rates. The same solution for the “low or no savings” is applied here. Users should consider setting up an automatic bill pay transfer to ensure that they never miss out any payments.

Overspending- Spending do helps to boost up the economy but spending too much on unnecessary things is the most common cause of increasing credit cards debts. It seems impossible to stop swiping our credit cards to get things that we want with all those glittery advertisements which keep on persuading us to buy, buy and buy! In order to prevent overspending, set a budget on your necessary monthly spending and stick to it!

Prevention is always better than cure. Think twice before you intend to purchase using credit cards and avoid mistakes that lead to burdens of debts. Good luck, people!


For more in-depth details, please visit the web sites below:
http://www.debtfirms.com/credit-card-debt.html
http://www.3debtconsolidation.com/creditcardmistakes.html

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Electronic Currency

11:01 PM / Posted by ~~wOrlD oF cHaRliE~~ / comments (0)

Hi, my dearest readers. Today I’m going to share some information regarding the electronic currency with you guys. Yet, before I provide the detail information about it, let me take this opportunity to share some basic knowledge first. As we know, the improvement of technology and internet has driven the use of electronic currency in the world. Besides, it also plays a major role in most of the transactions which perform or done through the internet. Thus, it is important to know about what is electronic currency as well as their pros and cons.

Now, let me ask you a question. What is the electronic currency? Isn’t something like traditional money that can be seen and touch? The answer definitely is NOT! In fact, electronic currency is an intangible money that cannot touch and it is money or scrip that just can be exchanged electronically.Thus, it is safe for us to use the electronic currency, we do not need to worry that the money will be lost. E-money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency is another term of electronic currency.


Electronic currency to be used for payment over the internet is stored electronically on receipt of funds. Moreover, it can be held on devices, cards or on a server, for examples pre-paid cards, electronic purses and etc. In order to exchange electronic currency over the internet, three systems should be involved which are computer networks, internet and digital store value system.

The examples of electronic currency are Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit. EFT is used to perform financial transaction electronically by using computer-based systems while direct deposit is used to transfer money by using certain system.




There are many companies that provide electronic currency in the world. One of the companies using this currency is PayPal. PayPal is an e-commerce business which allows payments and money transfers to be made through internet. Besides, a PayPal account can be deposited from bank account through electronic debit or by credit card.



Click and buy is also another company that provides electronic currency. It allows customers made payment through the internet without ever providing their personal bank or card details again. This system is currently used by Skype, Msn, T-online, Playboy, Electronic Arts and etc.


However, there are pros and cons using this electronic currency. One of the major benefits is security, by using electronic currency you do not need to worry about the exposure of your private information to stranger. You can made payment through internet without giving any private information.

Second benefit is lower cost transaction. Unlike other business which may eat up an unreasonably fees from your profit, electronic currency trading allows you to earn more from your business which require minimal fees only. Another benefit is globalization, which allows you to assess into global market with no restriction and control from local currency.

One of the limitations is failure of technology. Breakdown of network, defected by worm or virus and etc will cause the data and record to be disclosed to outsiders which may become the barrier of using electronic currency. On the other hand, additional hardware is required by the company in order to perform this electronic currency software and the installation cost is quite costly. Thus, cost of implementation can be considered as a big issue for the company.

If you want to know more about the electronic currency, please do not hesitate to visit the following links which might be useful for you.

i) Electronic Currency
ii) Electronic Currency Trading
iii)Benefits of Electronic Currency Trading

Thanks for viewing our blog.

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1st Dell physical store in Malysia: Review

10:51 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (0)

Article Review: 1st Dell physical store in Malysia
On December 2007, the 1st Dell’s store called Dell Direct Store is open at Mid Valley Megamall, one of the biggest shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur. Here I want to correct that Dell Direct Store@Mid Valley at previous actually is a showroom for public to feel and test out the machine and do not involve of any selling on that time. After a few month later, Dell Direct Store had changed to a real retail store. Why Dell decide to open a brick-and-mortar store and also selling online?

Before starting our discussion on reasons Dell goes retail, I would like to introduce some about the Dell to let the readers have a clearer picture on this post. Dell is founded in 1985 by Michael Dell to offer personal computer via mail order. As the advanced technology and germination of e-commerce, Dell implemented aggressive online order-taking instead of mail-order. Starting 2002, Dell opened kiosk located in shopping across the US in order to give personal service to customer who preferred this method of shopping to using the internet or the telephone-system. On January 30, 2008 Dell shut down all 140 kiosks in the US due to expansion into retail stores.

Reason Dell expanding business to brick-and-mortar
Loss on market share
According to research firm Gartner, HP took an 18.2% market share at year 2007, while Dell’s share slipped to 14.3%. Before the year of 2007, Dell was the largest personal computer manufacturer and hold majority of the market share on the world. It is possibility that Dell wants to follow the way of HP’s success as selling of HP computer in the online stores and also physical stores.

Feel and touch the product
Previously, Dell computer only sell computer online and result the consumers cannot fell and touch the product. Customers nowadays are reluctant to believe what appear in the online world although the online shopping website such as Dell provides 360̊ views of the products where you can rotate the product. The wise move of dell goes retail benefits customer who wish to scrutinize the product before make purchase.

Target User
In the year before 2008, Dell sells its computer with only target those who have the computer and internet connection. Many of the first time users or not online-trading literate like a fresh university students who purchase the computer do not have the idea of purchasing online and further let this great opportunity flow to competitors.

Others reasons
Some other factors such as online fraud is increasing, lower price due to direct sales model hurt brand equity, online payment still not popular in Malaysia, credit card only available for those who have a satisfactory income, and etc are causes of sales of Dell computer drop in Malaysia.

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The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

9:24 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (0)

Before to start with the discussion, I would like to give a short scenario to let the readers know more about the importance of online security.

Scenario 1: Andrew, a fresh graduate is willing to buy a camera online but he does not have experience in online shopping. Therefore his first question might ask: “Will I be cheated when I entering my credit card number?”

The above scenario shows that Andrew is worried about credit card fraud. So nowadays, online security has been online users’ main concern in protecting their transaction from potential threat such as denial of service (DOS), phishing (refer to previous post), virus and etc.

Today, I would not just discuss about the threats being bring by technical attack such as virus, but also will provide readers more understanding about the threats of nontechnical attack as well.

Technical attack
Technical attack refer to an attack perpetrated using software and systems knowledge or expertise. Some examples of threat in this category are virus, Trojan horse, and phishing.

Denial of service (DoS) or distributed denial of service (DDoS)
DoS or DDos is the threat that attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. The perpetrators of DoS usually use specialized software to send a flood of data packet to target computer, with the aims of overloading its resources. However DDoS attackers target a group of interrelated computer such as network and server. One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communication requests, such that it cannot respond to internet traffic, or respond slowly.

Trojan horse
The name of this technical attack is derived from the legend of the Trojan war in Greek mythology. Trojan horse is a programme that appears to be useful function but actually contains a hidden function that presents a security risk. It is designed to allow hackers to remote access to a target computer system and these hackers’ motives to remote computer system are mainly for data theft such as credit card information and use of machine as part of a Botnet to perform DDoS attack.

Virus and worm
Virus and worm are type of malicious programme that can cause damages to your computer such as deleting the files or corrupting the hard drive. A computer virus attached itself to a programme or file enabling it to spread from one computer to another. Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file which means the virus may exist on your computer but cannot infect your computer unless you run for it. However a worm is similar to a virus by design but unlike a virus, a worm can spread itself without any human intervention.

Nontechnical attack
Nontechnical attack is an attack that tricks people into revealing information or performing action that can compromise the securities of a network by only just deception or persuasion of perpetrator. Social engineering is a type of nontechnical attack that uses some ruse to trick users into revealing information or performing an action that compromises a computer or network. For example, the attacker could send an e-mail to inform the receiver he or she has won a grand prize and need to reveal their credit card number for certification purpose but actually the money has been embezzle.

As a conclusion, prevention is better than cure as personal information and intellectual property data is important. So internet user should install anti-virus programme and firewall to prevent technical attack and do not trust at any suspected e-mail and website to revealing information.

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Application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

7:16 PM / Posted by ~~wOrlD oF cHaRliE~~ / comments (2)

Hello, today i will continue to share another important topic with you again. As we know, there are many competitors in the business market and customers are more demanding and sophisticated as compared to before. Therefore, it is important for the local organisation to provide a secure information security system to their customers. In order to let you understand more about this system, I will share "the application of third party certification programme which is used in Malaysia" in this post.

Before I introduce the applicant, let me explain what is the meaning of 3rd party for this system. It means that, anyone who is issued digital certificate in order to provide verification that your website does practically represent your company and it is called certificate authorities (CAs). The most famous applicant in Malaysia is MSC Trustgate.com Sdn.


MSC Trustgate was established in year 1999 under Digital Signature Act 1997 (DSA), and it is a licensed Certification Authority which operating with the Multimedia Super Corridor. The core business of Trustgate is to provide digital certification services which include digital certificates, cryptographic products, and software development. Objective of Trustgate is to secure the open network communications for both locally and across the ASEAN region. Besides, the vision of Trustgate is to enable organizations to conduct their business securely over the Internet, as much as what they have been enjoying in the physical world.

There are few products and services provided by Trustgate which include SSL Certificate, Managed PKI, Personal ID, MyTRUST, MyKAD ID, SSL VPN, Managed Security Services, VeriSign Certified Training and Application Development.

The VeriSign SSL Certificate service is used to enhance the server security for your websites. Global server ID and secure server ID are the server security provided by MSC Trustgate. Moreover, Managed Public Key Infrastructure (MPKI) service is designed to increase the security of intranet, extranet, and internet application. An organization can create their own multiple digital certification program with efficiency and cost-effective through this flexible managed service. This service is to protect on-line transaction, digitally sign them and control the access to intranets and extranets.
On the other hand, there are millions of business transactions performed over the unsecured network. This unsecured network will increase the possibility of private information to be exposed and altered by others. Thus, digital ID is needed in order to ensure that the information is remained private. This digital ID can be considered as personal ID, without the digital ID in electronic transaction your request will be rejected. Trustgate’s digital ID is governed by Digital Signature Act 1997.


MyTRUST for mobile phone is to enable customers have a more secure mobile banking and other financial services. It runs on Wireless PKI platform and Mobile Operator infrastructure. The picture below shows the process of this service.

MyKad designed by government with PKI capability is to allow their citizen to perform the online transaction with government and private company. MyKey provided by Trustgate is the PKI solution for MyKad and to allow the holder to authenticate themselves online and digitally sign document or transaction.

If you want to know more about the services provided by Trustgate, please do not hesitate to visit the links below:
i) MSC Trustgate.com Sdn

ii) Third Party Certification

Last but not least, I want to comment that through the services provided by Turstgate we are clear that 3rd party certification is playing a major role in our daily life now. Hence, the websites owner should use this 3rd party certification program to enhance the confidence of their customers.

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Phishing: Examples and its prevention method

7:35 PM / Posted by Melissa / comments (2)

Hello readers. I’ll introduce the term phishing in this post. Besides, I will provide a few examples and prevention methods towards phishing. First and foremost, do you know what phishing is? It is “phishing” and not “fishing” although both words have the same pronunciation! A phishing (also known as carding or spoofing) expedition, like the fishing expedition it's named for, is a speculative venture: the phisher puts the lure hoping to fool at least a few of the prey that encounter the bait. Phishing is a fraudulent attempt using email messages and web sites designed to look as if they come from a known and legitimate organization, in order to deceive users to steal your personal information such as credit card number, social security number, account number or password.

According to About.com, there are a few examples of phishing identified.

Firstly is ebay phishing scam. This eBay phishing email includes the eBay logo in an attempt to gain credibility. The email warns that a billing error may have been made on the account and urges the eBay member to login and verify the charges.

Secondly is the Citibank phishing scam. The attacker claims to be acting in the interests of safety and integrity for the online banking community by instructing readers to visit a fake website and enter critical financial details.

Thirdly is the PayPal phishing scam. This PayPal phishing scams tries to trick recipients by pretending to be some sort of security alert that urges recipients to confirm their account details via the link provided where clicking the link actually takes the recipient to the attacker's website.

Example of email phishing scam

Example of website phishing scam

According to some tips from Windows Live, below are some signs of phishing for prevention purposes.

Unsolicited requests for personal information - Most businesses and organization would not ask for your personal information because they should already have this information in their file. If you get a request for personal information, call the company first and make sure the request is legitimate.

The phrase “Click the link below to gain access to your account.” - HTML-formatted messages can contain links or forms that you can fill out just as you’d fill out a form on a Web site. The links that you are urged to click may contain all or part of a real company's name, but the link you see is actually taking you to a phony Web.


The words “verify your account.” - A legitimate business will not ask you to send passwords, log on names, Social Security numbers, or other personally identifiable information through e-mail. Be alert of a message that asks for personal information no matter how authentic it looks.

Addressed as “Customer” - If your bank or other organization regularly addresses you by name in its correspondence and you get an e-mail addressed to “Dear Customer,” this may be a phishing attempt.

Alarmist warnings - Phishers often attempt to get people to respond without thinking, and a message that conveys a sense of urgency, perhaps by saying that an account will be closed in 48 hours if you don’t take immediate action, may cause you to do just that.

Mistakes – Another indication that could reveal phishing expedition is that phishers often slip up on the finer details and overlook typos, mistakes in grammar, and so on.

Below is a video that summarizes some prevention methods against PHISHING !


In my opinion, phishing will not succeed if we know how to identify it and also the preventions. Therefore, I hope this post will be useful to all internet users and let us be the "Phis-erman" =)

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How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

8:31 PM / Posted by phaikyin@snowyin / comments (2)

Hi, fellows! Today I'll provide some information on safeguarding to all of you. First of all, what does your personal and financial data mean to you? Is it only a name, age, address to you or your income, savings in banks, and money? As today’s technology is becoming more advance where online shopping and e-bill are becoming common to us, it also has opened up new opportunities for people to commit crime such as computer hacking and identity theft.

Never thought of crimes in the online world? Well, you should start aware of it now! Here are some tips to safeguard your personal and financial data:


Fend off “phishing”- Do not provide personal information through phone, mail or over the Internet, unless you know who you’re dealing with. Criminal may pose as representatives of banks, government agencies or popular online retailer and ask for your personal data through e-mails or by other means.

Shop at reputable online stores- You will need to provide personal data most of the time when you go for online shopping. Shopping at reputable stores such as Amazon.com and eBay may reduce the risk of stolen identities. Spending some time to research unsure internet site through the online Better Business Bureau before purchase online. On the other hand, it also ensures delivery of goods to your doorstep.
Check for latest security updates- Before giving your credit card information on an online retailer website, make sure your internet browser has all the latest security updates. Besides, ensuring the website that you are visiting is a secure server is also important because secure server is encrypted to protect any personal and financial information that you enter. There are several things that you have to look into to ensure the site is secure:
  1. The web address should start with “http://”.

  2. You should see a closed lock shown at the bottom of your computer screen.
  3. There should be a symbol of a key that is not broken.

Password protection- Always set a strong password to protect your access data and change the password once a while.



Install and update antispyware and antivirus programs- Install an antivirus program such as AVG antivirus, Norton antivirus, Kaspersky Antivirus and others to protect your computer from viruses that might steal or modify the data stored in your computer. In addition, scan the computer frequently to remove infected files.


Avoid clicking on pop-up ads or downloading information from unknown sites- Some of the pop-up ads itself is a virus, your computer will be infected once you click on it. Besides, a lot of video, images that available for download from some of the websites contained virus. Nowadays, even MSN messenger deliver virus through sending links which invite you to view something such as pictures.




So what are you waiting for? Let us start to prevent the outflow of our personal or financial data through internet right now!

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An example of an e-eommerce success: Amazon.com

1:26 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (0)

According to a survey done by Verdict Research on 15 January 2009, Amazon.com was the UK’s favorite music and video retailer, and came third in overall retail rankings. In the financial perspective (source from Yahoo Finance), amazon.com has increased its revenue by 28.86% and increased on its net income by 35.50% in 2008 and it maintained its position as the No.1 e-tailer in 2008.

Nowadays, e-commerce has become relatively popular and many companies have been thinking to be benefited from e-commerce. But how does Amazon.com gain more competitive advantage and stand the best above others?

Evidence generated from case studies and literature reviews have shown that the success of amazon.com is depends on four main factors: customer service, variety of product, easy navigation on its website, and the value position.

Customer Service
Amazon.com is proud of its customer services and desires to be the best customer centric company. A study shows that more than half of the Amazon.com’s customers are repeat customers. This success is based on customer value proposition, which is conducted by Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. He suggests that amazon.com must give a positive impression to its visitors, so that the potential buyers will visit the virtual store again. For example, a cookie file will be store in the users’ computer and next time, the users will be greeted with the words such as “Welcome back, Marcus Shopper”. After that, shoppers will proceed to recommend new book from the same genre by Amazon.com according to shoppers’ previous purchases. Besides, Bezos also mentioned that Amazon.com need to fulfill their promises such as on time delivery. As a result, Amazon.com can strengthen its customer relationship.

Variety of product
Initially, Amazon.com is an e-tailing pioneer selling books via an electronic catalog from its websites. In order to cope with changing environment and meet customer needs, Amazon.com has expanded its business from selling books to variety of products and services which include media, electronics, other merchandise, and other services.

Easy navigation
The homepage is a company’s first impression to customer and most important opportunity to serve the customer. Easy for use and navigate must start from the homepage to give customer convenience. Amazon.com’s homepage provides personalized product recommendations, e-mail notices, reliable payment system, and interactive support for all the customers.

Value position
Value is like a goal of the organization and plays an important role in Amazon.com’s success. There are 2 strong values that are practiced by Amazon.com. These include customer satisfaction and operational frugality (cost saving). The value of customer satisfaction can be referred back to the “customer service”. In the other hand, the operational frugality helps Amazon.com to save cost in order to spend huge money on branding and business expansion. For example, Amazon.com’s employees are paid based salaries that are obviously less than competitive rate. However, Amazon sustains employee loyalty through employees’ ownership of company shares and let employees benefit from the business success with their contribution.

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