Weekly Exercise 12 (Security and Privacy)

Question 1

Find an example of a privacy breach that was reported in the Australian or international news in the last 6 months. What were the consequences? i.e. legal, political, financial, personal etc. What action was taken in response to the privacy breach?


Risk Solutions International LLC, Loudoun County Public Schools
Ashburn, Virginia

January 7, 2014-Loudoun County school officials have responded to a data breach that made publicly available personal information about students and staff members, along with detailed emergency response plans for each school.

More than 1,300 links could be accessed through a Google search, thought to be password protected, unveiled thousands of detailed documents as to how each school in the district will respond to a long list of emergencies, which included the staging areas for response teams as well as where the students and staff would be located during an emergency.

Additional documents that could be accessed included students' courrse schedules, locker combinations, home addresses, phone numbers and birthdates along with the address and cell phone numbers for many school administrators.

The contractor Risk Solution International acknowledged that the breach was caused by "human error" on their part, which is said to be the cause of the data breach.

UPDATE: Loudoun County Public Schools administrators released a more detailed statement about the information made publicly available on the Internet due to errors committed by the contractor Risk Solutions International (RSI).

According to school officials, the investigation is continuing as to how the webpage, which was made accessible through online search engines without any password protection happened. The page included 1,286 links detailing information on 84 Loudoun schools. It is unknown how long the information was exposed or how many links were opened by unauthorized individuals.

Locker combinations were revealed for one school and only one parent contact information was revealed for fewer than 10 schools according to the spokesperson for the district. The statement also made clear that RSI's website was not hacked and that it never lost its password security. Instead, the breach occurred when RSI employees were doing technical testing on November 4th , December 19th and December 24th 2013. (1/9/2014)

Complete a comprehensive analysis of the facts and issues in the case. Some questions to consider -

What AmI technologies are identified in the case?
-Based on my knowledge, in this case AMI technology is the information of thousands of individuals were then sold back to them.

What drives DMC’s officers to take the actions they took?
-In my opinion, the officer will conceal violations of security known to keep company.

DMC is the clear market leader in the aggregation of AmI data. Are there any comparisons you can make to technology companies today?
-In my opinion, the company can be attributed to Google. Almost everyone these days use Google search to find what they want to search because Google has a lot of programs that can be used.

How realistic is the description of governments using the technology and prohibiting immigration from states with no AmI data aggregation information?
-In my view, it does not realistically use the technology and to prohibit immigration from countries without data aggregation Ami information. Because it can come from anywhere not only come from immigration.

What would be the impact of this digital divide?
-I think there may be a difference in the gap of trust between a company with customers and the general public.

List some of the ‘unintended consequences’ described in the case.

Do members of the class all agree on the issues raised by this case? What were the main points of difference (if any) in discussions?
-In my opinion, the unintended consequences they are regarded negatively on the case of a security breach. They will try to hide the case from the public.

References:

http://www.privacyrights.org/data-breach

Weekly Exercise Topic 11 (Web 2.0)

Question 1

Exercise – select five applications that you have not heard of before from Popular URL’s Web 2.0 awards or the webware awards and describe on your blog page how they could be useful to a business.

1.https://www.mint.com/

Mint pulls all your financial accounts into one place. Set a budget, track your goals and do more
with your money, At Mint, we believe money is for living. So we make everything
simple and streamlined. Sign up takes less than five minutes. Mint has more than 10 million users who know their information is
always secure. That's because we use 128-bit SSL encryption – the same
security that banks use – and all data is protected and validated by
VeriSign and TRUST. Plus, since Mint is read-only, no money can be
moved in or out of any account. See all your balances and transactions together, on the web or your phone.

Mint automatically pulls all your financial information into one place, so you can

finally get the entire picture.

2. http://www.tagged.com/

Tagged makes social discovery products that enable anyone to meet and socialize with new people. Our mission is to help everyone feel love and belonging, and we're building toward a vision where anyone can use a device to instantly connect with interesting new people anytime, anywhere.

Founded in 2004 and profitable since 2008, Tagged is a market leader in social discovery with over 300 million registered members in 220 countries who make over 100 million new social connections every month. Tagged is based in San Francisco.

3.http://www.theverge.com/

The Verge was founded in 2011 in partnership with Vox Media, and covers the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture. Its mission is to offer in-depth reporting and long-form feature stories, breaking news coverage, product information, and community content in a unified and cohesive manner. The site is powered by Vox Media's Chorus platform, a modern media stack built for web-native news in the 21st century.

4. http://www.prosper.com/

Prosper is America's first peer-to-peer lending marketplace, with more than 2 million members and over $692,000,000 in funded loans.

Prosper allows people to invest in each other in a way that is financially and socially rewarding. On Prosper, borrowers list loan requests between $2,000 and $35,000 and individual lenders invest as little as $25 in each loan listing they select. In addition to credit scores, ratings, and histories, investors can consider borrowers’ personal loan descriptions, endorsements from friends, and community affiliations. Prosper handles the servicing of the loan on behalf of the matched borrowers and investors.


5.http://www.zoho.com/

Zoho.com offers a comprehensive suite of award-winning online business, productivity & collaboration applications. Customers use Zoho Applications to run their business processes, manage their information and be more productive while at the office or on the go, without having to worry about expensive or outdated hardware or software.

To date, Zoho.com has launched 25+ online applications — from CRM to Mail, Office Suite, Project Management, Invoicing, Web conferencing and more. Zoho has received numerous awards, including an InfoWorld 2009 "Product of the Year" award, a 2008 PC World "25 Most Innovative Products Award" and a 2007 TechCrunch "Best Enterprise Start-up."

Zoho.com is a division of Zoho Corporation, a privately-held and profitable company. With offices in CA, Austin, Chennai, Yokohama and Beijing, Zoho Corporation serves the technology needs of more than 9 million customers worldwide.



References:

httphttps://www.mint.com/what-is-mint/

https://www.mint.com/how-it-works/

http://about.tagged.com/about/

http://www.theverge.com/about-the-verge

http://www.prosper.com/about/

http://www.zoho.com/company.html

Weekly Exercise Topic 10 (Trust)

Questions


1) What does this meant by the following statements?


Trust is not associative (non-symmetric)
-Trust is not associative (non-symmetric) is a trust that is not balanced. It's a different trust path between two parties, such as the seller and the buyer.


Trust is not transitive.
-In my opinion, trust is not transitive trusts that are not related to each other. For example, trust a dealer not associated with any other dealer.


Trust is always between exactly 2 parties.
-I think this is a trust that has always prevailed between the two parties such as the trust between sellers and buyers.


Trust will involve either direct trust or recommender trust.
-In my opinion, direct trust is a trust that is derived from the feeling or belief in self. The recommender is trust derived from the opinions of others.


2a) Have a look at the following websites. What are some of the elements that have been incorporated to increase your trust in the sites? If there are also some aspects which decrease your level of trust describe them as well.


http://www.eBay.com.au .
-It gives the buyer protection, security for buyers to buy in privacy.


http://www.anz.com.au
-This website provides security through log on. It can protect your personal information.


http://www.thinkgeek.com
-This website is also concerned with the protection of personal information and customer service.


http://www.paypal.com.au
-These websites keep financial information private and protect against fraudulent transaction.


2b) Find a web site yourself that you think looks untrustworthy.

-www.Newegg.com






References:

 http://www.anz.com.au/auxiliary/help/help/website-security-privacy/

http://www.thinkgeek.com/help/privacy.shtml

https://www.paypal.com/au/webapps/mpp/paypal-safety-and-security

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/548846

Weekly Exercise Topic 9 (Channel Conflict)

As millions of consumers flock online to purchase just about anything and everything — new and used, large and small, cheap and expensive, from near and afar — how will the interaction between buyers and sellers change?

Buyers with access to the Internet have certain opportunities that may affect what they purchase, when, and where they take their business. Using sites like Google or Yahoo!, a buyer has the ability to search for a product or service; to compare sellers on important attributes such as price, quality, delivery and service; to read product reviews and consider the opinions of other buyers; and to do all of this quickly, cheaply, and with relatively little effort. This can be done regardless of whether or not the buyer chooses to complete the purchase online. Never before have buyers been able to know so much, so easily, about what they purchase and from whom. Sellers can reach large numbers of consumers anytime day or night and can extend their business beyond the limits of geographic proximity more easily. Unconstrained by shelf space, sellers can list a large catalog of items and can quickly adjust prices to reflect changes in demand. A seller, like Dell Computer, can eliminate intermediaries and engage buyers directly online to understand their consumption habits and track their preferences, and then use this information to configure customized products and provide personalized levels of service. Just like the buyer who can easily search for the seller offering a product at the lowest price, sellers can search for the one buyer who is willing to pay the most. This is exactly what happens at the close of every auction on eBay (the highest bidder wins). Furthermore, the immediacy of the data that flow from digital marketplaces allows sellers to integrate the supply chain and better manage production, inventory and distribution. Not only do sellers know more about buyers, they also know more about their business partners and about their competitors

One of the key questions to be considered is ‘who owns the customer relationship?’ i.e. the retail outlet or the brand. Even ownership of communication with the customer is an issue. If you purchase something from a retail outlet is it then ok for you to get email promotions or is it SPAM?

Conflict then can be direct, internal or external (an example of external would be a Chinese flat screen TV maker (for well known brands) launching an online brand of their own. While this can certainly lead to conflict (undercutting prices) external conflict is less threatening as it is not a full on assault on the same brand name. Email campaign has always been an excellent service and reliability while spam is a dubious message like a get rich quick scheme.

Ultimately, when the Internet comes into the mix, it causes conflict between the different channels. Should you buy key words to protect your brand? Try some searches of well known words. Some examples include – Qantas, Telstra, BHP, Nike, Coke – a couple of these brands are obviously paying Google a fortune to just have their result showing, others e.g. Nike and Coke return all sorts of searches.

Keyword is very important to be purchased to protect the brand. Even if you have to pay google to show you the results as a search or other more well known brands.

References:

http://digitalenterprise.org/markets/markets.html

Weekly Exercise Topic 8 (Online Auctions)

Q1: eBay is one of the only major Internet “pure plays” to consistently make a profit from its inception. What is eBay’s business model? Why has it been so successful?

eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things. eBay has built an online person-to-person trading community on the Internet. It has been successfully because eBay is the world's online marketplace; a place for buyers and sellers to come together and trade almost anything.

Q2: Other major web sites, like Amazon.com and Yahoo!, have entered the auction marketplace with far less success than eBay. How has eBay been able to maintain its dominant position?

eBay has been able to maintain its dominant position because, EBay’s success is its ability to bring customers and businesses together at a relatively low cost without barriers such as geographical location, language, race getting in the way. It has allowed a lot of people to become entrepreneurs through the sale of goods and provision of services over the internet.

Q3: What method does eBay use to reduce the potential for fraud among traders on its site? What kinds of fraud, if any, are eBay users most susceptible?

eBay does some very clear things in terms of trying to help people overcome their inhibitions and enter into transactions with what would otherwise be strangers to them.

Q4: eBay makes every effort to conceptualize its users as a community (as opposed to, say “customers” or “clients”). What is the purpose of this conceptual twist and does eBay gain something by doing it?

eBay believes in the concept that they can become a community. Community is fundamental to the economic success of eBay. EBay’s communities are varied and encompass different interests of the wider community with many of the boards encouraging users to build the communities that are fundamental to eBay’s economic success. There are communities based on trading, buying, hobbies and fun and games to name just a few. There is a social community that does not allow any business talk and discussions include parenting, religion and politics amongst other topics. EBay communities play a unique role in the Internet networked communities as opposed to the pre-internet economy. Trust is based on member feedback encouraging a community of collaboration and communication amongst its users. Members are producers of knowledge and share this with the wider community and this knowledge base is an asset to eBay. Its community members have a sense of ownership as their volunteer labor benefits themselves as well as eBay.

Q5: eBay has long been a marketplace for used goods and collectibles. Today, it is increasingly a place where major businesses come to auction their wares. Why would a brand name vendor set-up shop on eBay?

In my opinion, its easy to brand name vendor to connect to over the world because it is very close. Then, the cost to the business is also very low. All transactions on eBay easy for the set. Popularity also an eBay account into focus the brand name vendor.

Q6. I have a few businesses, and I have used eBay for about 12 years on and off. Currently I have about 600 books listed on eBay (seller name ozrural). I stopped selling on eBay for a few years but they changed the rules this July and it is viable again (for me). What do you think changed?

I am not sure about that. What I know eBay change the picture quality requirements and change coupon policy.

References:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/history.html

http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/questions/about-ebay.html

http://www.ask.com/question/why-is-ebay-so-successful

http://teamcaffeine.wikidot.com/businessmodel-community

Weekly Exercise Topic 7 (Automata)

1

1)like to create your own cybertwin as well. The more you ‘train’ your twin, the better the responses will be. Check this link to my ‘intelligent’ cybertwin which I also mentioned in the Powerpoint. You may While it is just a fun exercise, Think of the opportunities. Imagine if we had a cybertwin that could answer your questions about the course. Or perhaps a shopping assistant?

It's an interesting idea. I also would like to have your own cybertwin where I can be trained to serve as my twins to facilitate me. I became more excited after hearing the words of co-founder and CEO of MyCyberTwin, liesl Capper-Beilby. Here the yield of their statements -“A CyberTwin can chat to thousands of people at the same time, delivering instant 24/7 customer service. A customer doesn’t have to wait in a queue for an agent to become available. They click to chat and the majority have a good experience, getting the help they need. This allows small, medium and large enterprises to focus their human resources on other important and challenging tasks internally. Every time a customer chats to a CyberTwin instead of picking up the phone to talk with a human agent/employee, the business is saving time and money and working towards its end objectives.” says co-founder and CEO of MyCyberTwin, Liesl Capper-Beilby.

One Australian company creating this technology is MyCyberTwin, established in 2005. With R&D offices in Sydney and a commercial HQ in New York, it has had thousands of SMEs sign up to use its MyCyberTwin Professional product. NAB, NASA, HP and Accenture are also clients. Currently growing at a rate of 100 percent annually, in 2012 MyCyberTwin is anticipating 200 to 300 percent growth as market awareness of virtual agents continues to quickly mature and become mainstream. MyCyberTwin Professional is tailored to be affordable to SMEs keen to build and deploy a CyberTwin virtual agent themselves. It’s free to open an account and they can select an avatar, publish to the website and monitor their CyberTwin for business intelligence. )

2) Write a one paragraph describing the Turing test and another paragraph describing an argument against the Turing Test, known as the about the Chinese room.
The video (linked in the Powerpoint) ‘Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics: Public Debate’ is a debate which asks the question ‘will machines one day achieve consciousness’. Following on from this debate consider the following question -

A Turing test is a test performed to determine a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The basic concept behind the test is that if a human judge is engaged in a natural language conversation with a computer where he cannot reliably distinguish machine from human, the machine passes the test. Responses from both participants in the conversation are received in the form of a text-only channel. This test was introduced by Alan Turing in 1950.






The Chinese room is a thought experiment designed by John Searle in his 1980 article "Minds, Brains, and Programs", largely as a response to Alan Turing's Turing test. It was designed to prove that computer programs will never be able to create minds; by showing - for a certain degree of "showing" - that they don't really understand communication. The experiment has become well known and influential in various scientific fields, especially cognitive science.

3) Can virtual agents succeed in delivering high-quality customer service over the Web? Think of examples which support or disprove the question or just offer an opinion based on your personal experience. Write you answer on your blog page or express an opinion on this voice discussion board (it’s simple to join). If you choose this option please link (live in an hour or so) to it from your blog page.

In my opinion, I believe that the virtual agent can help a company continue through web. However, constraints for common problems online, it will probably be less effective or less convincing.

References:


http://business.nab.com.au/artificial-intelligence-171/

http://www.techopedia.com/definition/200/turing-test

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Digital Market

weekly exercise for topic 6 is already presented