E-commerce
Initially, the Internet was designed to be used by government and academic users, but now it is rapidly becoming commercialized. It has on-line "shops", even electronic "shopping malls". Customers, browsing at their computers, can view products, read descriptions, and sometimes even try samples. What they lack is the means to buy from their keyboard, on impulse. They could pay by credit card, transmitting the necessary data by modem; but intercepting messages on the Internet is trivially easy for a smart hacker, so sending a credit-card number in an unscrambled message is inviting trouble. It would be relatively safe to send a credit card number encrypted with a hard-to-break code. That would require either a general adoption across the internet of standard encoding protocols, or the making of prior arrangements between buyers and sellers. Both consumers and merchants could see a windfall if these problems are solved. For merchants, a secure and easily divisible supply of electronic money will motivate more Internet surfers to become on-line shoppers. Electronic money will also make it easier for smaller businesses to achieve a level of automation
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Virtual Internet-based, MIT's Kerberos, Millicent Scrip, Initially Internet, Data Interchange, Digital Equipment, Commercial R&D, Internet Electric-money, electric money, spending habits, secure hash, , consumers merchants, authentication anonymity divisibility, authentication anonymity, blinding factor, hash algorithms, security authentication, data packet, credit card, security authentication anonymity,
Approximate Word count = 1403
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
