Added Security: More Online Sales?
Many urban legands are attributed to “FOAFs”. FOAF stands for “friend of a friend.” The way a yarn keeps traveling around is because someone who you think you trust told you about it. Few can specifically name the “friend of a friend” that they heard about, and the beat goes on.
My brother will never buy anything online. He is not a man of advanced age, where you could understand that they weren’t accustomed to it. Rather, he is under thirty and had computers in his classroom since second grade. He is not an internet junkie like I am, but still, it surprises me. The reason why is the very FOAF who told him about someone else who had a bad thing happen to them when they bought something online. He cannot name who this individual actually was, of course, or what transpired, but is adamant that it “must have been bad for it to have been mentioned.” Of course, there was no recollection if the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend had a problem with a PERSON or an actual security problem.
Believe it or not, the hold is so strong on him, that I can’t even entice him with the idea that there may be a hand painted necktie with a picture of Boba Fett on it somewhere in cyberspace that he will never see in a store. His reply typically takes on the tone of someone who has just been asked if he would do something morally dispicable and against every cell in his body.
Comodo has long been exploring the idea of a Trusted Internet, where everyone will be equaly protected by malware and security issues. Online merchants and users alike would be protected and verified by double authentication between sites and visitors What’s more, is that they would work towards providing it free for all. There is freeware everywhere, but their vision is to implement it internet-wide and a make it part of the infrastructure.
While this seems like an answer to a lot of problems, there is one little fact in the company’s press materials that make me scratch my head a little:
Within a Trusted Internet, Comodo empowers users to verify site content, verify site identity, and verify business practices of a site, all while staying safe using a holistic security system that incorporates malware detection, prevention, and removal services
I wonder how businesses practices would be verified. If it is merely a check to insure that the site is not sending out evil robots to visitors, or giving visitors a virus, then I am all for it. If it is really saying the business practices of the business will be verified, I would want more information on that. I would wonder who would set the standard on what businesses practices should be, but more importantly, how are they assessed. Rating a site on the way business is conducted is way too subjective when it is something so cut and dry. I may be reading too much into this, which is entirely possible. Blame my past as a method actor for imagining subtext that isn’t there.
Maybe I will email this post to my brother and it will get him thinking. Alternately, I will ask my 83 year old great-aunt who is on my joke list to set him straight. He doesn’t need to turn into an internet junkie, but at least he should know that if he has to get something online, that he will be okay.
What do you think? Will added internet-wide security entice you to do more business? Or, do you think that the individual businesses that you deal with are trustworthy, and something like this is to protect people who don’t follow their gut instincts?
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