Friday, September 14, 2007

Safe shopping on the Internet

It is actually much safer to shop on the Internet than doing that in a shopping center. It is literally impossible to get involved in a car accident or to be mugged on your way back from the shop. It is highly unlikely that you would slip on the floor in the supermarket or that you contract a disease from the many shoppers that you mingle with.

Internet shopping is only unsafe in the sense that you do not necessarily know what you get when you buy. There is also a risks that you enable someone to steal your information or identity and then use this to de-fraud you.

If it possible to eliminate (or drastically reduce) these risks from Internet shopping by utilising the unique characteristics of mobile phones. Mobile phones provide an alternative channel (that is often very difficult to intercept - not like the Internet) that can be used for alternative security communication. In addition the phone is a very simple (yet extremely secure and easy to use) second factor for authentication. This provides for an easy implementation of dual factor authentication.

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