Increase of E-Commerce Threat in Nowadays

Increase of E-Commerce Threat in Nowadays

Introduction

E-Commerce (Electronic commerce) is one of the recent and emerging internet services. E-Commerce is simply, the doing of commerce using Electronic Technology such as internet, or other computer networks. The E-Commerce comprises the activities such as selling and buying of the products through internet. Security in the E-Commerce is one of the most challenging parts. As usual, there are several security threats associated with the E-Commerce, as in all kinds of the internet services. Though there are lots of advantages in conducting the business through e commerce, threats may keep people away from E-commerce.

What are threats in E-Commerce?

The popularity of internet makes the increase in threats to industry and organizations in the world. Website defacement, denial of service, theft of customer data or intellectual property, financial fraud etc are some threats in the E-commerce. Threats to E-Commerce can be classified into two general categories: threats to servers and threats to the customers. Threats to server may be from an actual attacker(s) or by technological failure.

Identity theft is one of the recent threats to the E-Commerce. This paper explores the details of identity theft – A recent threat in the E-Commerce.

What is identity theft?

Identity theft is a term used to refer to fraud that involves stealing money or getting other benefits by pretending to be someone else. Or in other words, identity theft can be defined as, the stealing of one person’s personal information by another to commit fraud or other crimes. The most common form of identity theft occurs when someone obtains another person’s social security number, date of birth or any other confidential data. Thieves utilize this information for retrieving money from our bank account, or to create fake driving license, or to apply for loan in our name etc. In the term Identity theft, the word ‘identity’ refers to any confidential data concerned with the user.

History of Identity Theft

The history of identity theft did not start with the arrival of the Internet. But it nowadays has become the most related with internet. Back at the beginning of the history of identity theft, if you wanted to steal someone’s identity, you had to kill him for it. Currently, identity theft is much less dangerous. Identity theft is widely considered to be the fastest growing crime in the world. The rapid growth of identity theft is due to popularity of internet and E-Commerce. Recently the subject ‘identity theft’ got more importance, because victims of identity theft are increasing rapidly. Few crimes have made people more anxious more quickly as the sudden attack of identity theft.

E-Commerce services are all about transactions, and these dealings are very largely driven by money. This attracts hackers, crackers and everyone to the E-Commerce with the knowledge of exploiting loopholes in a system. Hackers sometimes gain access to secured information like user accounts, user details, passwords, addresses, confidential personal information etc. It is a significant threat in view of the privileges one can avail with a false identity. For instance, one can effortlessly log in to an online shopping mart under a stolen identity and make purchases worth thousands of dollars.

He/she can then have the order delivered to an address other than the one listed on the records. One can easily see how those orders could be received by the impostor without arousing suspicion. While the fraudster gains, the original account holder continues to pay the price until the offender is caught. Once they get chance to intrude into server, they feed the system with numerous bits of dubious information to extract confidential data (This is called phishing). This is particularly dangerous as the data extracted may be that of credit card numbers, security passwords, transaction details etc. Also, Payment gateways are vulnerable to stop by unethical users. Cleverly crafted strategies can sift a part of the entire amount being moved from the user to the online vendor. (Pandey, 2009).

Method of identity thefts

Identity theft can affect all aspects of a victim’s daily life and often occurs far from its victims. Identity thieves use both traditional physical methods as well as internet related methods.

Traditional physical methods

This method consists of, stealing of information from personal computers, collecting confidential data from persons, by the trusted people, probing trash bins for retrieving documents, robbing of a purse or wallet, which may contain the credit card, password details etc., e-mail theft and rero