Wednesday 28 January 2009

Online transaction protection is hard

It's difficult to protect both the buyer and seller in an online transaction. Policies will probably favour one over the other, as evidenced by occasional eBay changes and who gets outraged each time. As an illustration, imagine that I am managing my bank accounts online, and there are regular transfers going out of my account. If I have control of all of them, then I can stop payment for any goods and services already received, and the seller gets screwed. If I have to allow others to pull money blindly out of my account, I have to trust them all to take only what they are entitled to. Even the hybrid case results in a few oddball situations, such as donations being pulled regularly and out of my control.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Both parties need to trust a third, neutral agent.
PPS - But that still doesn't protect them from all fraud.

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