Rapid Pre-Exam Revision

E-commerce means buying and selling goods or services over the Internet using websites or mobile apps, where money (or value) changes hands digitally.

E-commerce happens when value (money) crosses firm boundaries online. E-business is the digital enabling of a firm's own internal processes; it does not directly involve exchange of value with outsiders.

E-commerce is unlike traditional commerce in eight ways: it is everywhere, global, uses shared standards, can carry rich messages, is interactive, increases information density, can be personalized, and supports social content creation.

Web 2.0 is the social, participatory web where ordinary users create and share content — through social networks, blogs, wikis, and video/photo sharing sites.

E-commerce is mainly classified by who sells to whom: businesses to consumers (B2C), businesses to businesses (B2B), and consumers to consumers (C2C). Mobile, social, and local e-commerce are special subsets.

The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks built on common standards. It carries e-commerce through three core ideas: packet switching, TCP/IP, and client/server computing.

Internet protocols are rules for how data is transferred across the Internet. TCP/IP is the core; it has four layers, with the Application Layer holding protocols like HTTP (web pages), SMTP/POP3/IMAP (email), FTP (file transfer), Telnet (remote login), and SSL/TLS (secure communication).

Internet utility programs are helper tools that run on clients and servers to check connections, trace paths, and diagnose network problems. Examples include Ping and Tracert.

E-commerce faces threats at three vulnerable points: the client (your device), the server (the merchant's site), and the communications pipeline (the network in between). Threats include malicious code, unwanted programs, phishing, hacking, fraud, spoofing, sniffing, insider attacks, and denial-of-service attacks.

Malicious code (malware) is harmful software that includes viruses (replicate file to file), worms (spread computer to computer), Trojans (look benign but harm), ransomware (lock files for ransom), and bots (remotely controlled zombie computers).

Potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) install themselves without genuine user consent. The main types are adware (pop-up ads), browser parasites (change browser settings), and spyware (secretly capture keystrokes, messages, and screenshots).

Phishing is when attackers trick users into revealing confidential information via fake emails or websites. Identity fraud is using someone's stolen personal data for illegal financial gain. Phishing often uses social engineering — exploiting human gullibility rather than technology.

A hacker is someone who tries to gain unauthorized access to a computer system. A cracker is a hacker with criminal intent. Cybervandalism is intentionally disrupting, defacing, or destroying a website. Hacktivism is cybervandalism or data theft for political purposes.

Credit card fraud is the theft and misuse of payment card information. In the past, the most common causes were lost or stolen cards and employee theft. Today, the most frequent cause is the systematic hacking and looting of corporate servers where millions of card purchases are stored.

Spoofing means hiding your true identity by using someone else's email or IP address. Email spoofing forges the sender address; IP spoofing forges the source IP. Pharming redirects links to fake sites, and spam websites (link farms) promise services but are just ads.

A sniffer is an eavesdropping program that monitors information traveling over a network. Used legitimately, it diagnoses network problems. Used criminally, it can steal passwords, e-mail, files, and confidential reports from anywhere on the network.

Insider attacks come from trusted employees who have access to privileged information. Bank employees steal more money than bank robbers; the same is true for e-commerce sites. Some insiders act maliciously, while others are simply negligent.

Encryption turns readable plain text into unreadable cipher text using a key, so only the sender and receiver can read it. Its purposes are (a) to secure stored information and (b) to secure information transmission.

Symmetric key encryption uses the same shared key to encrypt and decrypt messages. It's fast but has flaws: the same key must be shared (and could be stolen), computers can break ancient ciphers quickly, and you'd need a separate key for every party you transact with.

Public key encryption uses two mathematically related keys: a public key (widely shared) and a private key (kept secret). Either key can encrypt; the other decrypts. It solves the key-exchange problem of symmetric encryption.

Simple public key encryption ensures confidentiality but not authentication, nonrepudiation, or integrity. Adding a hash function (which produces a fixed-length message digest) and a digital signature (encrypting with the sender's private key) provides all three.

A digital envelope is a 'key within a key': the message is encrypted with a fast symmetric key, and the symmetric key itself is encrypted with the recipient's public key. The recipient uses their private key to get the symmetric key, then uses it to decrypt the message.

A digital certificate is a digital ID issued by a trusted third party called a certification authority (CA). It contains the subject's name, public key, serial number, expiration date, and the CA's digital signature, allowing others to verify the subject's identity.

An e-commerce payment system is the way money moves from a buyer to a seller over the Internet — using credit cards, digital wallets, stored value, or mobile apps.

Digital cash is electronic money — unique encrypted tokens that represent real cash value and can be spent online, with Bitcoin being the most famous example.

A digital wallet is a phone app that stores your card details and lets you pay by tapping your phone near a reader, without exposing your real card number.

When you pay online with a credit card, the merchant never sees your card. The transaction goes through a clearinghouse and merchant bank to your card-issuing bank for verification, using SSL/TLS encryption to protect the data.

A stored value payment system lets you keep money in an online account (like PayPal) and pay merchants or other people instantly from that balance, without sharing card details each time.

An accumulating balance system adds up many small purchases over time, then charges your card or bank account once with the total — saving on per-transaction fees.

A digital checking payment system lets you pay online by directly debiting your bank account with an electronic cheque, instead of using a credit card.

Wireless payment systems let you pay using a smartphone — either by tapping it at a store (NFC) or by sending money to a friend through an app like Venmo.

An online auction is a web-based sale where buyers bid against each other and the highest bidder wins. eBay is the most famous example; some auctions are also business-to-consumer using dynamic pricing.

Dynamic pricing means prices change based on demand and supply instead of staying fixed. The Internet made auctions and other dynamic pricing methods (like Uber surge pricing and flash sales) grow rapidly because it can reach a global audience cheaply.

Online auctions help buyers find sellers globally, discover fair prices and lower transaction costs — but they require time to monitor, carry trust risks, and merchants can end up selling below expected prices.

Online auctions come in four main types: English (highest bidder wins, like eBay), Dutch (multiple units, lowest winning bid sets the price), Name Your Own Price (Priceline), and penny auctions (bidders pay a fee per bid).

Intellectual property (IP) is the products of the human mind — music, books, inventions, brands. IP law protects these creations by giving creators a time-limited monopoly, balancing public access with private reward.

The three main types of IP protection are copyright (expression, life+70 years), patent (inventions, 20 years), and trademark (brands, renewable indefinitely). Each protects a different kind of creation.

Copyright protects the expression of ideas — books, music, software, films — for the creator's life plus 70 years. It does not protect the underlying ideas themselves. Fair use allows limited use without permission for teaching, criticism, and news.

On the Internet, copying a song or film produces a perfect identical copy at near-zero cost, fuelling piracy. Encryption and Digital Rights Management (DRM) are the technological responses, but they are imperfect.

A patent gives an inventor a 20-year monopoly on the ideas behind an invention, granted by the USPTO. It protects ideas themselves (unlike copyright) but you cannot patent laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.

A business method patent protects a specific way of doing business online — like Amazon's one-click checkout. Since 1998, such methods have been patentable in the US, though critics argue they grant monopolies on basic commercial ideas.

A trademark protects brand names, logos, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish a company's goods. Trademarks last 10 years and can be renewed indefinitely. Infringement is judged by market confusion and bad faith.

Online trademark abuse includes cybersquatting (grabbing famous brand domain names) and cyberpiracy (diverting traffic to fake sites). The ACPA (1999) and ICANN's dispute procedures help, but trademark owners must be vigilant.