Register
Today for the PA Technology Showcase
Attend this FREE event to learn of the latest technologies to improve business
processes Thurday, December 18, Wildwood Conference Center, Harrisburg, PA
8 a.m. to noon
Brunch sponsored by Microsoft and DataReturn
Attorney
General John Ashcroft recently reported that 125 suspects have
been arrested in a crackdown on Internet crimes ranging from
hacking to fraud to selling stolen goods. The seven-week sweep
involved police from Ghana to Southern California and uncovered
125,000 victims who had lost more than $100 million. Those
arrested stand charged with a variety of crimes that highlight
the innumerable scams and criminal acts that now take place
online. Many are accused of selling stolen or nonexistent goods
online, having fenced stolen goods through online auction sites
like eBay, set up phony escrow services to handle payments
and touted fraudulent investment clubs through slick Web sites,
according to a Department of Justice summary of the cases.
Some suspects allegedly stole classified files from government
computers, hacked into business computers to steal customers'
credit card numbers, disabled computers running child abuse
hotlines and sold counterfeit software or computer memory chips,
the Justice Department said.
Federal
agents said they had not yet found the perpetrators of the
Blaster worm that disabled millions of computers this summer,
but had gained some valuable leads, thanks to a reward program
offered by Microsoft.
As
expected, the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday unanimously
approved legislation impacting unsolicited commercial emails
(spam). The President is expected to sign the bill within
the next 10 days. The legislation pre-empts all current state
spam laws, including the pending California anti-spam law.
Since the House was unable to push through its own bill in
the Energy And Commerce Committee and chose to instead work
with the Senate's bill, there were no committee or conference
reports issued. While the bill's effective date is January
1, 2004, the Federal Trade Commission will now begin to promulgate
regulations. This is an important step in the process
and should not be overlooked. Specifically, the FTC has one
year to codify its definition of "unsolicited commercial
emails." The FTC also has nine months to establish
its rules concerning mobile (wireless) unsolicited commercial
emails, and within six months is authorized, though not required,
to create a do-not-spam registry, similar to the popular do-not-call
registry.
America
Online recently announced that it will launch a service allowing
video game players to enter tournaments to compete for bragging
rights and prizes. The new AOL Ladders service, a partnership
with Case's Ladder, is to be offered for games on Sony's PlayStation
2 console. Support for Nintendo's GameCube is planned for next
year. The service, which is free to AOL subscribers, comes
as game publishers and console makers take steps toward launching
their own game leagues. With the industry entering a slower
growth phase, pay-for-play events and other subscription services
have been seen as a way for publishers and service providers
to stem declines in revenue and extend the financial life of
games beyond the point of sale. In gaming ladders, players
sign up to compete in a particular game on a particular platform.
After finding an opponent, players play and then report their
statistics. As players improve they rise up the "rungs" of
the ladder. AOL also said it would expand the service next
year by allowing subscribers to form leagues and manage tournaments.
According
to a Forrester Research study, a growing number of broadband
subscribers are choosing price, not speed, when it comes to
picking a provider. That's good news for digital subscriber
line (DSL) providers that have introduced access services that
are cheaper, but slower, than cable providers. However, an
increase in consumer interest for less-expensive broadband
will not significantly bridge the market share gap between
cable's nearly 2-to-1 lead over DSL.
Keynote
Systems has reported that, according to The Keynote E-Commerce
Transaction Performance Index, major e-commerce sites took
a severe performance beating on Black Friday. During peak shopping
time on Black Friday (noon - 3 p.m.) the Index revealed that
consumers could only complete a transaction 80 % of the time;
Therefore, almost one in five transactions attempted to be
completed on the major holiday shopping sites failed. The Index
reported that on the day before Thanksgiving the average success
rate was 98.4 %. According to Keynote, the 20 % failure rate
was an indication that e-commerce sites were not adequately
prepared to deal with the level of increase in online shopping
activity experienced on Black Friday. It has been shown that
negative online shopping experience translates directly into
lost revenue. Therefore, what small business owners can learn
from the failures of the big players is that businesses must
continually monitor transaction quality as experienced by actual
end users. Not being adequately prepared for a significant
increase in transactions can lead to lost revenues — not just
in the short term, but in the long run as well, as customers
might refuse to return to a site after a poor shopping experience.
