Exercise 16. Authentication and Encryption systems

1. I went to ebay.com.hk website. They of course accepted PAYPAL which is their own payment solution provider started with the concept of using an email address as the single "Authentication" tool to verify the customer's input of data. The data collected is checked against any credit bureau for accuracy and credit history.

http://www.ebay.com.hk
http://www.paypal.com

How to use PAYPAL ? they have a guideline to help their auction site users to use PAYPAL.
Click this http://pages.ebay.com.hk/paypal/buyer.html

Yes. I do trust ebay and paypal. They are trusted merchants and websites.

2. For any merchant to receive trust, they can either use their main brand or lend a hand from their official corporation status or to have their website and organisations tested/endorsed by BBB (better business bureaus) or similar organisations.

For websites, a merchant should always use their own digital certificates (which is verified by Certificate Authoriry - CA) before and hence buliding that TRUSTED relationship.

Consumers of websites, if in doubt, can check the issuer of the digital certificates about their details.

3. Verisign has been a certificate authority providing 3rd party services to organisations and websites the digital certificates business.

4. TRUSTe offers privacy and trust endorsement services for organisations, businesses and websites. According to Consumer Privacy Guide (2009), TRUSTe developed the first online privacy seal program, which has grown from over 500 licensed websites in 1999 to more than 1200 sites in a variety of industries in 2000 and over 2000 in 2001, including 50 of the top 100 most heavily trafficked Web sites. The TRUSTe privacy seal programs allows consumers to have assurance that the websites they are using are compliant with fair information practices approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Federal Trade Commission and prominent industry-represented organizations and associations.

5. PGP encryption is often used in mail and or point to point. You will need a public key, a private key and the software to encrypt and decrypt.




6. There are physical keys (eg. HSBC SD Key, please see below, thumbprints or other biometric measure, rectna laser scanning are all the new technologies available for authenticating identities.



Reference:

1. Consumer Privacy Guide (2009) What is TRUSTe and how does it work to protect my privacy? Retrieved on May 10, 2009 at http://www.consumerprivacyguide.org/faq/truste.shtml