 by Alan Herrick
Right now the world is poised on the brink, looking over the edge of the abyss at that evil little tiki of e-commerce. It is difficult to tell if the attention put on the security and the viability of e-commerce will produce the completely military-level security corporate America is depending on or if it will continue to be plagued by ill fortune and long waits.
I have a few, well more than a few problems, with the development of secure on-line transaction and e-commerce. The first concern is obvious and has been mentioned by other journalists in Web and business-based publications already. Why do we need such tight security? Most everyone in America now with a credit card freely gives their credit card number away to strangers on the phone or mails it off secured only by a folded piece of paper and some foul tasting glue. Included in this envelope is most likely a check containing your bank account number as well as your signature. Why are we so paranoid about transmitting over the phone lines from a computer terminal a mere 1/3 of that same information? Someone in the encryption software development business obviously managed to start a great scare early on in the on-line transaction and web business model discussions.
I somehow doubt there are many crazed, sugar polluted, green-haired hackers huddled over laptops patched into pay phones, in darkened bus terminals, sitting and waiting to catch your credit card number in transit. I would also imagine that the same protection is in place by your credit card provider that protects you from someone stealing your credit card carbons from a retail store trash can and buying $40,000 worth of collectible porcelain Cher dolls from QVC Homeshopping Network with your card number. Hacking into any large system to get credit card numbers is a little more problematic than it might seem. The odd thing about the Internet in the late 1990's is that we tend to leave all kinds of footprints and information about who we are and where we came from every time we access information on the web or via the Internet. If I were a credit fraud mastermind my first choice in obtaining credit card numbers would not be to hire a team of computer hackers. It would not be economically feasible....it is a very poor business model even for the Lex Luthor types of the world. Likewise, an individual hacker is not going to last long enough or inflict enough harm to create a nationwide credit card security dilemma. I think there are far more disgruntled and underpaid retail employees capable of obtaining your credit card number on a daily basis than there are qualified computer science specialists with the mind to even consider bothering with such a scheme.
The attention and concern that has been given to on-line transaction security is almost unprecedented. We are almost at a point that would be akin to avoiding the purchase of goods from a retail outlet until we knew there was a bonded security officer of impeccable character watching over every cashier 100% of the time. This security officer would not only have to make sure your credit card receipt carbons were handed to you and destroyed, he would also need the ability to make it absolutely impossible for the cashier to read and/or memorize your card number during the transaction process. Whew! seems to me this would be a costly, impossible, and ineffective means.
What makes us trust the U.S. Postal Service with all of our personal information (drivers license, insurance policy #'s, credit card numbers, bank account numbers)? We trust the Postal Service yet we are very frightened to enter a single one of these numbers into a computer and transmit it via the phone lines to a final destination. It certainly can not be due to the fact that the U.S. Postal Service is a government agency and that means they can be trusted. If we have learned anything through the history of man it has to be that the government of any country is the last thing that can be trusted. I would put my money and trust on the underpaid kid with the mohawk at the local Tower Records outlet long before I would trust the U.S. Government completely.
The promise of Home Shopping Network style on-line malls has caused every corporation, small business, and ugly American to establish a web presence with a possible "make millions overnight" scheme hidden snugly away somewhere in all that 2D html coding. The World Wide Web has become a polluted sea of billboards and advertisements. If suddenly the promise of secured transactions were to disappear there would be an immediate drop in the number of corporations and businesses who supported web sites. The potential of on-line sales has been one of the most important influences in WWW development over the last half a decade. Without the glimmer of hope that all the world would buy from the privacy of their own home every household item they could ever imagine, the investments and seed capital poured into WWW and Internet development would not have led us to some of the technologies available on the web today.
Internet technologies have boomed over the last few years. Bigger, badder, newer toys for delivering and presenting the content just to keep Joe Sixpack returning to a site day after day, week after week until on-line secured transactions are in place and we are capable of convincing him he needs to buy polyvinyl lederhosen off the Der MeisterHeiny Homepage. Give me a break! In reality, Joe Sixpack cares much less about secured transactions than anyone else involved in the e-commerce equation. Joe Sixpack has already been handing his credit card number out over the Internet for well over two years purchasing subscriptions to services that supply him with adult oriented content. Many of the these adult oriented sites are pulling in mid-six figures income easily. If Joe Sixpack sees something he likes, he buys it. That is truly the American way. Instead of looking at developing secured transactions maybe the business models or the products sold via the web should be improved to reflect the base instincts of the average citizen.
Another possible reason for web commerce not rocketing through the roof and increasing exponentially from month to month could be due to the fact that there just aren't enough Joe Sixpacks with computers and Internet access and the personal computer is NOT a television.
Over 90% of Americans have televisions in their homes. Obviously the television is the prime medium for relaying the advertising and sales message to the cloned sheep masses. The bigger the audience is, the more people you'll be able to convince that a new and improved laundry detergent does in fact get your clothes cleaner than your current laundry detergent-- and they will buy it. The way I see it, e-commerce will have its day when there are just as many computers in American homes as there are televisions and when the interface requires no technical skill, no reading ability and the content can be accessed and purchased without moving from an overstuffed couch. The easiest way to sell a product is via a "sit-back" medium. The web is a "sit-forward" medium. In order to affect someone sales-wise through a "sit-forward" medium they have to really be into what they are looking at (see adult oriented material section of above paragraph). Securing on-line transactions does not make the future of e-commerce. Removing the entire thinking process from finding, presenting and purchasing a product does build the future. We are American...the less we have to think and the less work we have to do the more we will buy...
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