[8426] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Online Shopping and Banking?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tansin A. Darcos & Company)
Thu Nov 18 14:05:10 1993
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 13:51:46 -0500 (EST)
From: "Tansin A. Darcos & Company" <0005066432@mcimail.com>
Reply-To: "Tansin A. Darcos & Company" <0005066432@mcimail.com>
To: bob <bobk@cyberspace.com>, com-priv@psi.com
>From: Paul Robinson <TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
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bob <bobk@cyberspace.com>, writes:
> The options to shop and do banking transactions electronically
> have proven to be a highly desirable services on other commercial
> networks. The Wall Street Journal recently had an article that
> said PCFlowers on Prodigy has become one of the top five FTD
> sellers of flowers. Microsoft announced today that it is getting
> into the home electronic banking business with US West and US
> Bankcorp. I'm sure that the Internet will soon have such
> services.
Yes, if the capability is there, it will eventually show up.
> How far is the Internet from being able to provide reliable
> avenues for online financial transactions? What would it
> take for reliable email-ordering on the Net? How about
> banking and stock transactions? Is the primary roadblock
> the security issue of sending sensitive financial information
> (such as credit card numbers) over the Net?
That may be a problem but it's probably less than is thought. If you use
a commercial mail site, you post your message and it is sent via SMTP to
the destination computer site. Your administrator and the administrator
of the destination site could conceivably read the mail, and the sites in
between could conceivably monitor all intervening packets for data, but I
suspect the risk is no where near as bad as people think it is; this ain't
the equivalent of someone writing their Master Card number on a postcard.
How many messages traverse the Internet each day? Two million? Three?
If you could distinguish between mailing lists and private mail, it's
still a hell of a lot of messages. I personally get 300 messages a day on
MCI Mail. Someone want to monitor my mail for applications? Or a large
company that gets 5,000 messages a day?
Then what do you do? Unless you are sending a package to the address
issued on the card, or have a merchant number, only professional crooks
can use other people's card numbers. (Or can they? Do most merchats
check the address to send a package against the subscriber address?)
More later; I have to go to work and must stop.
---
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Paul Robinson - TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM
Voted "Largest Polluter of the (IETF) list" by Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
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