Cyber-Bargains

Lelong! Lelong!! Lelong!!! We, Malaysian would normally heard this word very frequently in the market especially in our night market or pasar malam.

"Kame"(came) From China-KFC

In Lelong, the safety and interest of both the buyer and seller are protected. Why i said so?

First, there is a rating system for sellers. The seller can only gain points to increase its own rating from the buyer who bought goods from them. In the other way, the seller's rating will drop if he is dishonest with its sales. So, if we as a buyer want to determine the trustworthy of the seller, we can always refer to its ratings. The higher the rating means the seller is trustable. Of corse, it is not always seller will cheat the buyer. It will happen the other way as well. To prevent this from happen, all the users including buyer and seller required to register a account. To register the account, important details like name, telephone number, id number are required. This is to ease the investigation to fraud sales or any conn case.

And lastly, there is also a brilliant system in Lelong. It is called the Safe Trade. This system is to eliminate every risks between the seller and buyer. In this system, when a buyer and seller agree to their trade terms, the buyer will pay to this Safe Trade. Then, Lelong will infrom the seller to ship goods and when the buyer receive its goods and approve the payment. Then, the seller will get its money from Lelong Safetrade. However, there is surcharge of 2 ringgit per transactions to be bear by the buyer.

Lelong's Safe Trade

Will i buy stuff through Lelong or any other bidding sites? Is the stuff offered there cheaper? Is there more variety of stuff available there?

I can answer you that i rather drive myself to the nearest mall to opt for the stuff i want. This is because i don't trust online selling yet. Online sellers seem like want to make a large fortune by marking up the prices of their goods. Besides, i would only pay for the stuff which i have seen with my own eyes and touched with my own hands.

Therefore, shopping mall still is my choice and Lelong is a place merely for me to waste my time.

Today, E- Learning industry is diverse. Numerous universities have developed profit oriented E-Universities offering courses and degree programs. E-Learning involves the use of Web-based technologies to deliver a broad range of learning solution whereby learning materials can be easily accessed from the web. Students can communicate among each others using e-mail, chat, or discussion forum. E- Learning has provided lots of advantages and disadvantages as follow:

Pros

E- Learning offers economies of scale. Technology-based solutions tend to be more scalable than traditional teaching methods. Besides that, E- Learning also provides conveniences and time flexibility. Students can easily access to the Internet to get online resources or other materials anytime and anywhere whenever they can access to the Internet. E-learning has becoming vast popular among students living in developing and non-developing countries. They can afford to get higher education degrees by saving extra expenses for traveling, living accommodation, foods and others fees.

Cons

On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages in using E-learning.

One of the disadvantages is lack of face to face communication with tutors will lead to misunderstanding among tutors and students. This will significantly affects students with low ability especially when they find difficulties in using the new technology and online software.

Also, students will feel isolated and left behind than other students. Further more, it takes more time for tutors to provide individualized feedback especially when they encounter Internet connections problems. As comparing to the traditional methods, tutors can easily understand the students’ needs meanwhile the students also can inquiry if they face any problem immediately.

There are many advantages in using E-Learning programs meanwhile there are varieties of disadvantages too. We should always consider the easiest way to study. Students that find it difficult in using E-Learning programs might stick to the traditional method and vice visa.

Prepaid cash card is simply means you have to put in certain amount of money into your account and then you can use it via a card to buy stuff. Sounds simple?

The most popular prepaid card in Malaysia is probably the Touch'n Go.

Touch'n Go was introduced back in 1997 and i was the first few people who had this kind of card. Many people were still "alien' to this kind of card which can be used to pay toll. This showed how "ulu" was Malaysian at that time. Cos our neighbor Singapore had this kind of system back in don't know how many century back <---exaggerated!!

This dude had to "gostunt" cos got no enuf credit..Damn it!!

Later, Touch'n Go has expanded its services like we can use it in the bus, train comuter and even pay for parkings in some selected malls.With this card, the speed of paying for low value but high frequency transactions is enhanced and it is also freaking convenient.

We no need queue like them with this card.

However, i find that the conveniency to reload the credit of Touch'n Go is very bad. Yea, we can reload it in certain toll plaza, selected petrol station and some Maybank atm's. But why can't we reload it in the largest 24 hours convenient store in the world 7-11? I hope the management of Touch'n Go heard this and could provide us more places to reload the credit.

The other kind of prepaid cash card emerged rapidly is the Debit card. This card is basically same as the credit card but you can only spend the balance of amount in the account. This means you have to think and check for the balance whereas for credit card, you spend then only you think!

Girls want Credit Card not Debit Card!! Definately a smarter way to control your girlfriend's spending.

With debit cards, there are a lot of advantages for the consumer. We can carry less cash than ever.

Secondly, those kiasi or kiasu people who don't want to overspend or get headache when the credit card statement arrived can have this card.

Lastly, for youngster especially boy who wants to attract chicks can have one too.Because there is a chicks magnet rating which i created myself. But at last, all u gotta have is a Big P!

Chicks magnet--> ATM< debit card< credit card< car< apartment< BIG PENIS

I hope in the future, Malaysian could have a perfect and flawless prepaid cash card system. This could prevent pickpocket crimes from happening.

PS to thief: Sorry thief, i only have few plastic cards for you!!

Money originally is in the physical substance ie, gold, silver and copper. Today, the normal transaction is pay in the form of notes and coins. Besides from the notes and coin currency, currency now has slowly emerged into the form of electronic currency with the rapidly changing computerized world.

Electronic currency refers to the money which is exchanged only electronically. Obviously, this will involve computer networks, internet, and digital stored value. Direct deposit and electronic fund transfer are the examples of electronic currency. Electronic currency will function on the principle that every deal affects only two sides, for instance one is payer, and another is the receiver.

In general, there are two types of electronic currency which are online and offline electronic currency. Online electronic currency means the users need to interact with bank through modem or network in conducting a transaction with a third party. Offline means the transaction conducted need not directly involve a bank. The bank can know what everyone bought, where they bought it, when they bought it, and how much they paid for both online and offline electronic currencies.

In traditional currency system, people need to carry a bag which is full of currency notes, using vehicles for transferring, depositing or withdrawal of funds from one place to another. They may fear of getting lotted when carry this bag. On the other hand, electronic currency system need not fear of getting lotted because the transaction ie transfer fund is carried out online and not physical substance. This can increase in public confidence in using the electronic monetary system.

Other benefits of electronic currency system are convenience, and it able to increase efficiency of transactions ie shorten the transfer fund period. Besides these, it also can create new business opportunities with the expansion of economic activities on the Internet.

Although electronic currency system can provide many benefits as stated above, there is a major disadvantage to electronic currency which is security. For instance, the user of electronic currency system is misplaces his/ her private key. There is a possibility that a person may use it to withdraw funds from the bank. With the private key given, the person is able to withdraw the money. The money withdrawn will never be able to recover back from bank.

The world’s first mobile payment service has been launched in Malaysia. One of the examples is Maxis Fast Tap whereby it integrates mobile payment services which use Near Field Communications (NCF) technology. Its not only allows communication at short range but also offer a wider range of features that enable credit cards. NCF technology offers consumers an easy and convenience way to secure transactions by only using a mobile phone.

Mobile Money is another example of E-mobile payment that addresses the limitation of cash, cheques and credit cards. It enables registered users to pay goods and services anytime and anywhere. The consumers no need to carry money or credit card to make transactions. They only need to use their mobile phone to make online booking such as cinema ticket. By using mobile payment system, it helps to eliminate the hassle to queue up for paying the cinema tickets fee especially during weekends and holidays.

E-Mobile payment scheme are an attractive alternative from both the perspective of cost and convenience. On top of that it also fulfills consumer needs and enables them to search for large number of merchants easily. It has overcome the problem whereby consumers need to shop from one place to another. Also, it abilities to attract a large number of consumers has benefits both merchant and service provider. Even though mobile payment system is still a very new strategy, but I believed that it will gain acceptance of all Malaysian soon as it will bring benefits for our society.

Credit cards debts can say is a common topic nowadays. Almost every one of us would have at least a piece of credit card. But do you really consider about the consequences after having it? Actually there are many factors that would cause someone into bankruptcy but there is also lots of prevention. The following are the causes and the prevention of credit card debts.

Causes:

Saving little or Not at all –

Most of the people do not know how to manage their spending and simply spend on those useless items which can cause to credit card debts. This will force us to pay interest on these purchases every month. So many families accumulate lots of debts is because of poor money management. They not only don’t have a monthly spending plan but also not keeping track of the monthly bills. This would cause us unaware of where our money is going. Besides that, some of the people will spend off their salary once they get it from the employer. In this case, if something unfortunate tragedy happen, he or she surely not enough money to pay for it.

Underemployment – if you are underemployed, this mean that you are working for less than the standard number of hours at your job. In this case, you should match your current income by cutting down your lifestyle. But most of us wouldn’t care so much about this. We will always think that spend first and worry later. So the credit cards debts would accumulate to become more and more.

Less Income, More Expenses – less income meaning that one people are having a low salary with the employment but making large expenses on purchasing. This obviously leads to a rise in debt. Besides that, if the main earner in the house has loses his job but the monthly expenses are not cutting down would force the family to use credit cards for groceries, utilities, and any other things that needed. As a result, credit cards debts automatically increase.

Prevention:

Keep Good Management of Your Finances – what type of scheme can help you become a more prepares and more organized consumer? Yeah, is a well-planned financial management scheme. This can help u to determine your monthly income and needed expenses in your lifestyle. You won’t choose to pull out your credit card from your wallet if you have a good management plan. In addition, you can avoid putting large amount of debts on credit card if you have some savings. You can set up a budget to yourself in order to

keep track of your expenses.

Always Pay on Time – in order to keep away from credit card debts, paying on time is one

of the best solution. Before using a credit card, ask yourself, “Do I have the ability to pay for this?” If you unable to control your finances and manage your card payment schedules, then you should not acquire a credit card. Besides that, paying on time can helps you to prevent from raising interest rate except if you are late paying. In addition, pay double the minimum payment if you can afford it because paying extra will pay your balance more quickly.

Avoid Extra Expenses – this mean that you have to adjust your shopping habits to reduce credit card debt. It is not to spend more, especially on the items that not needed. Shopping at smaller general stores, groceries shops or any nearest shops can help you to prevent from spending more on unnecessary items. But if your aim is the shopping malls then indirectly it can cause your credit card debt to grow. Less go out less spending, less spending less credit card debt.

http://www.3debtconsolidation.com/top10-causes.html

http://www.cardratings.com/howtoavoidcreditcarddebt.html

http://consumereducation.suite101.com/article.cfm/credit_card_debt_solutions

Are the viruses found in the mobile as threatening as the computer’s one?

What would happen if your mobile phone is infected by malware?

I am a user of Nokia E71, a Symbian based operating system smart phone which its

performance can easily surpass my 20 years old computer. This phone operates like our normal

computer, I used it to surf nets, msn chit chatting, storing files from the internet and many

more. So do I install antivirus software in this phone?

Nokia E71-My cute little phone

The answer is yes but it was 4 months ago. I used Karpersky

Mobile Security. But I deleted it

for several reasons.

Kapersky Mobile Security's display on Nokia 5800

It makes my phone performs like a snail…Slowwwww..

It did not detect any virus after I used the phone from day 1. So I presumably there is no virus

are interested enough to attack my phone or the antivirus did not do its job.

I did not use my phone to access the internet to pay

anything. So, if my phone is hacked by hackers, they most

probably would know which porno sites I visit the most. HEHE

So I would answer the question I asked just now. Yes, there is a need to worry about mobile

malware if you always use your phone to deal with financial stuff like doing e-banking which

requires user id and password. If not, keep using your phone without any antivirus software

as you can enjoy a more responsive smart phone.

Up to date, the threat of the

mobile malware is not that severe compared to the computer malwares. A survey

carried out by SMobile said there is only 1.5% of Symbian based phone is infected by

malware. So, may be in the future mobile malware will be getting more serious as the

phone capable to replace computer and this could invoke more hackers to create

malware to attack the phones.

You bought a new computer, installed the operating system and other applications including an anti virus software. But after few months or half a year, u feel that your computer is running slower than ever and more and more unknown stuff popping up to disturb you.

Using a "turtle" computer

Then you will start to think whether you are infected by any "shits" ( at least this is what i call them - virus, malware, Trojan and many more) and slowed down your computer.

I think the hacker has hacked the Singapore ID department if not this felor's father hate him right after he is born

Not this kind of cute worms INFECTING your coms

Hope i have this kind of firewall to cook those viruses in my Vista

Which is the better?or can i install all of them to get maximum protection??HAHA

Do you have a proper safeguard on your personal and financial data? Most of the people like to rely on the computer to save their data information while some of us like to make an online transaction in buying and selling through the Internet. But do u really careful in protecting your personal data from stolen, losing or misuse by the intruders? Lets me gives you some useful tips that may help to prevent your data from damaging.

Install and maintain anti-virus and a firewall – Viruses and Trojan horses that may lose or modify our data on the computer can be protecting by the anti-virus software. However, a firewall is a software program that designed to remove the bad people and allow the good people. Besides that, if we have an older computer or using a dial up, we may need to separately buy a firewall and install ourselves instead of a modem that have an added layer of protection which using in nowadays.


Using encryption key to store confidential data – In order to prevent or avoid unintended disclosure, we can use the encryption key to stored data. It means that we coded the information into unreadable form of characters, so that nobody can open our data. In addition, we can protect our data by encrypting the whole storage drive or select whichever folder as we want. If we want to ensure our data is more secure, then we should create a unique and a longer encryption key. The longer the code, the more secure the data.



Never open a mystery attachment – Do not open any link or an attachment that sending by unknown parties. It is because those of the attachments may contain viruses that will harm our data or else directly to the computer. Another reason is that if we open a link that contains viruses, it maybe will affect our personal or financial information without our notice.





Secure the network – Now everyone has Internet to make an online access to search for the information. But some of us may use a wireless network to online. So we have to make sure that we secure it, because an unsecured network would cause a hacker to gain access to anything we do. In order to be safe, we should lock our router and encrypt our information by keeping away the intruders.



Do not put private information on public computer –Nowadays, most of the people like to go to the cyber café or any other wireless zone to access for the information that they want. But they do not realize that the public computer is the most unsafely to use. Why I say so? It is because if you access your private account at the cyber café, then you have to make sure you log out completely from your accounts, otherwise another users would try to access into your personal information. Try to avoid save login information like username and password into public computer.

Phishing is a threat to every internet user as it gains personal financial information through sending fraudulent email. Besides, phishing also can the personal information when the users doing personal financial information through online banking or e-commerce transactions.

The example of a phishing e-mail is an official e-mail from a fictional bank. The phishing e-mail sent to the internet user on behalf of the bank which requests the user to send personal financial information such as credit card, social security, bank account number, passwords and others. Lately, I got a phishing scam email pretending to be Maybank2u. It required me to enter my details including my LOGIN PASSWORD. Of course I am not stupid enough to give them that and moreover the terrible grammar has worked as a warning alarm to me. However I gave it a try and luckily Mozilla prompted me the web as a phishing web. (good reason to use Firefox right?)

There are some ways that the internet users must know in order to avoid from becoming a victim of phishing.

Obviously, the users must be suspicious with any email with urgent requests for personal financial information unless the email is digitally signed. For instance, an e-mail sent by fictional bank which contain misspelling word usually is phishing e-mail. The users should never supply their personal information via e-mail. The users must always turn on both desktop and network firewalls. Firewalls can help the users prevent from the suspicious malicious code entering the users’ computer and browser.

Another easy way to prevent a phishing attack is keep the anti-virus software up-to-date. There are many products on the market usually are included in anti-virus software. This software program usually using filter which searches the content in the message that may be carries phishing software. Besides these, the users must not enter any sensitive or financial information into pop-up windows even it looks like official. This is because this pop-up window usually has no way to check its security certificate. Many of them are usually contain phishing scams which will gain the information and damage the computer.

The internet user must remember Think Before You Click. This can help the user from phishing threat.

Have you guys ever wondered what to do with the internet when you are introduced to it for the very first time? I had that experience before and I remember I was stoned in front of the computer with the very old Netscape internet browser but got no idea what to do with it. Fortunately at that time msn have search engine and it was the only search engine I knew about its existence. Then I started to use msn search engine to search all those stuff which I was interested in but. But here came a problem, all those search results were not matched to what I had expected from. This had pissed me off a lot and when I have almost lost my faith in msn search engines, I found a mighty powerful search engine-The Google Search Engine.

When people mention about Google, we would automatically think of search engine. This is how dominance of Google in the search engine industry. The Google Search Engine somehow gives me more accurate and pin point search results compared the other search engine. It hardly ever fails me and I dare to say 8 out of 10 searches, it strikes the bull eyes. From then on, I depend heavily on Google whenever I need information for my assignment, self interest, random searching and many more. Google has changed the source where I find information which is usually the library. Library had become the place for my friend and me to chit chat or loaf around.

I also found Google Search engine has a lot of interesting features in it and this makes the users can search specifically and accordingly. Google allows the users search images, news, groups, books, scholar and many more. The features I like the most is the images search. There is a saying “a picture speaks a thousand words”. This saying is so true as I am a very lazy person and I hate to read. I randomly type anything under the image search and it will come out with lots of images. Eventually these images capture my attention and from there I slowly read the contents of the article and gain information from there.

The second service from Google I use the most is the Google mail Gmail. It works as my secondary email as I favor msn mail more. However, the venture of Gmail into the free email industry has made the free email services make a big leap. This is because Gmail offer larger mail capacity compared to the other email provider. It has a incredibly 1 gigabytes of space per account offer to the user. This is significantly big space compared to the initial msn or yahoo mail which has about 10 megabytes only. This has benefited the users to store more mails. Due to this, I reluctant to delete my older mails or junk mails and this had changed the ways I manage email.

Another service from Google I like is the Google Maps. How cool is it to punch few words to the Google Maps search and u could see where u stay at. Besides, this images you see is either in satellite form or map form. It also provides direction to any places on the planet. This features is super cool to me and most of all, it is free of charge. Lately, Google has also introduced its very own internet browser, Google Chrome. It has a very clean interface and user friendly. But it needs some minor tweaking before it could steal my loyalty towards Mozilla Firefox. It is because I find Firefox is somehow safer and faster compare to Chrome.