VIRTUAL SHOPPING - A LURE FOR CROOKS

Forget about the traffic, the crowds, the uggly battles for sold - out items -now by pushing buttons on your computer you can make your virtual -shopping basket full within 10 minutes! The new generation of shop sites are so easy to use that consumers don’t have to give the medium a second thought.

There is no room for compromise that shopping via Internet is the most comfortable way of spending money. While the weather outside is frightful , you can visit thousands of virtual stores with milions of great items – while in your pajamas.
Besides that clothes you want to buy are measured by digital taylor without the occasional embarrassment that comes from telling others your measurments.

But on the other hand , Internet users are concerned about threats to their personal privacy on-line. Five years ago , if someone wanted your credit card number or travel itinery , they’d have to rob you – now it’s on the Internet. Any time you send information over the Net , it passes through a host of computers on the way to and from its destination which may leave what’s known as footprint of your information that will pass through more computers , before the buyers store it on their own system.

Thanks to this culmination of a lucrative trend e-commerce will grow to hundreds of billons of dollars by 2002.
We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the theft of intellectual property and valuable information – industrial espionage , extortion and people stealing things to make a buck.Crooks can make off with enormous sums and the risk of being recovered are minor compared to robbing an armored car.Experts estimate that three quarters of all computers lack basic security and even those with safeguards are at risk. For some crackers the challenge of piercing them is more of a lure than a detterent. More importantly , a large of computer crimes are committed by legitimate users , disgruntled employees or greedy technicians. So a lock on the door is not enough.

The Internet made available , instantaneous acces to online shopping which gives miscreant wonderfull easygoing possibilities to make swoops, violation and attacking computer systems.