Ecommerce

Ecommerce

• Issues arising from ecommerce are largely legal because stakeholders in different locations and countries with different laws

• Also operate in two worlds, virtual and real world

• Types of ecommerce– B2B– B2C; eg. Amazon– C2C; facilitated by website, eg. Ebay and carsales

Ecommerce

• Types of items having success:– Products that are small and easily transported, eg.

Books, flowers– Services that are mainly information exchanges,

eg. Banking, airline reservations, auctions, dating agencies

• Advantages of ecommerce:– Open to everyone 24 hrs a day; 7 days a week– Fast way of obtaining and comparing information

Ecommerce

• Advantages of ecommerce:– Fast and convenient way of contacting customers

& suppliers– Internet allows a vast amount of data &

information to be presented– Reaches a large audience, nationally &

internationally– Relatively low cost way to get a business started

Ecommerce Issues

• Buying & payment issues:– Issue of information privacy– Security of payment– Reliability of supplier– Authenticity of the goods – Safe delivery of the goods

• Spam– Issue of unsolicited, bulk, advertising email– Content of spam often related to phishing, ie. Fraud or

dubious practices, eg purporting to have found lost money for you

Ecommerce Issues

• Spam– Hard to get removed from spammer’s list– Spam clogs servers of ISPs– Risk to your privacy– Computers & servers being “taken over” to send

email are often part of a botnet; (collection of computers that can be controlled by a bot master to perform malicious actions

Ecommerce Issues

• Shopping cart technology, how does it work:– A back end database storing information stored on the ISP’s

servers or stores servers– Website displays information in product display pages usually

on the ISP’s servers– Administration software, content management system, (CMS),

that the shop owner or manager uses to manage the online website

– ISPs web servers creates pages in real time being dynamically generated by the web server. Shopping carts often use Active Server Pages, (ASP) to create the store pages from a database.

– Hacking is a potential problem

Ecommerce Issues

• Disposal of ICT products:– This is an environmental issue– Responsible disposal is a major issue– Dismantling & disposal is a problem because it is

very expensive, time-consuming and labor intensive.