Core Capital Partners, one of buySAFE’s venture capital investors, is pretty active this quarter. It was announced last week that Core is leading a $10 million round of financing in Covega Corporation.
Month: August 2006 Page 1 of 2
One of buySAFE‘s investors is Core Capital. Core Capital is a $370 million fund located in Washington, DC. Core has been a fairly active investor in 2006, and this week, it was announced that Core led a $4.4 million Series B investment in Inlet Technologies.
For those of you that know me, you know that I appreciate inspirational quotes, poems and stories. Life is a complicated journey, and personally, I believe one of the keys to success in life and business is learning from others and their experiences.
As Otto von Bismarck once remarked…
The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) has announced that its Fall 2006 Summit will take place in San Francisco, California on 9/20/06 – 9/22/06. I have attended three or four PESA Summits, and they are always fabulous events. The attendees list includes many of eBay’s largest merchants, and since most of them run fairly large multi-channel operations, these sellers also represent some of the most successful small and medium e-commerce retailers in the world. Many of the largest e-commerce service providers will also be in attendance including eBay, Google, Overstock.com Auctions, Amazon.com, PayPal, buySAFE, ChannelAdvisor, and Infopia. Therefore, the Summit is a great business development event as well.
If you haven’t registered for the event, you should do so quickly. The event is limited to the first 300 registrants. You can register at PESA’s website.
Earlier this week, I posted on the subject of eBay and PayPal phishing email scams. It is impossible to completely protect yourself from the bad actors, but I wanted to share with you my recommendations on how to protect yourself from these types of scams. The following are my top 10 tips on how to avoid phishing scams and identity theft:
1) Never click on the hyperlinks in emails
The text you see as an email hyperlink may be cloaked or hidden. The cloaked hyperlink could take you to a website that you weren’t planning to visit. If you aren’t completely sure of the source of the email, you should simply retype the URL directly into your browser. This is one of the best ways to avoid fake hyperlinks and the threats associated with phishing emails.
One of buySAFE’s investors is Grotech Capital located in Timonium, Maryland. It looks like Grotech might well have exit with one of its investments, MEDecision.
There is big buySAFE news this week. buySAFE passed the 3 million bonded product listings milestone. The announcement was made on the buySAFE blog earlier this week.
This is exciting because it means that there are more than 3 million items for sale at buySAFE Shopping and bonded by buySAFE. The Bonded Items can be found on eBay, Overstock.com Auctions, and TIAS. In a few weeks, you will begin to see Bonded Items direct from merchants’ website stores. Obviously, the more Bonded Items avaiable for sale, the better the experience for shoppers looking to buy safely. Therefore, this exciting news for everyone.
Congratulations to the entire buySAFE team! Nice work.
Ted Richardson at Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds had a great post last week on "The Art of Defeating a PayPal Scammer – Part II" It is a good read, and Ted’s tips are right on.
PayPal provides users a number of educational resources including "How to Spot a Spoof". Also, eBay’s Senior Vice President of Trust & Safety, Rob Chestnut, has written an eCommerce Safety Guide that I have found interesting as well. You can listen to Rob Chestnut in this BusinessWeek interview, "Fighting Fraud on eBay".
In spite of all the work Rob Chestnut has done over the last few years to combat eBay frauds, emails that appear to come from eBay and PayPal continue to one of the biggest risks to online surfers in 2006. I personally receive a half dozen fake eBay or PayPal emails a week, and I am not alone.
According to The Arbor Networks Security Blog, eBay and PayPal were the #2 and #3 targets of phishing attacks in the first quarter of 2006. I have seen other stats that are less severe, but obviously, eBay and PayPal phishing emails are a major risk to consumers.
Obviously, the point here is to be careful when surfing online and reading your email. I will provide you with my specific tips for avoiding phishing scams later this week.
I was recently appointed to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Joint Commission on Technology & Science Cybercrimes Advisory Committee. The general purpose of the advisory committee is to study and advise on key cybercrime issues under consideration by JCOTS and by the Virginia legislature.
The focus for this year’s advisory committee is computer trespass and cell phone spam.
Specifically, we will be studying HB 254 (2006) and HB 1354 (2006) during the 2006 legislative interim. We will work to determine what changes need to be made, if any, to further refine these bills.
HB 254 ammends the Commonwealth’s existing computer tresspass statute by adding three provisions prohibiting certain forms of spyware. In addition to the three provisions, there was a proposed amendment exempting certain software providers from the three spyware provisions.
HB 1354 attempts to prohibit unsolicited text messages (spam) sent to wireless devices in the Commonwealth. However, both the CAN-SPAM Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulate certain types of messages sent to wireless devices. This advisory committee will need to determine what types of messages the state may regulate and if there is a sufficient need for regulation at this time.
During our first meeting in late July, the Cybercrimes Committee also discussed ideas on how to combat eCommerce fraud, pharming, phishing and MySpace.com safety problems.
I was very impressed by both the legislators and the citizen advisors. There are a lot of smart folks in Virginia thinking, proactively, about how to make the Internet a safer place for all of us, and I will keep you up to date on our work over the course of the year.
The Cybercrimes Advisory Committee consists of the following members:
Virginia Legislators:
Citizen Members:
- Michael A. Aisenberg, VeriSign
- Patricia Boggs, Cyveillance
- Charles Curren, AOL
- Steve DelBianco, Association for Competitive Technology
- Anne Gavin, Microsoft
- Thomas W.J.C. McCrystal, Creative Perspectives
- Russell E. McGuire, Virginia Office of the Attorney General
- Adam Ruttenberg, Cooley Godward
- Gerry Stegmaier, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
- Steven L. Woda, buySAFE
Related articles on the Internet:
AuctionBytes
AuctionWire
Here is a nice blog post about buySAFE. "Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds" is a blog dedicated to educating folks about online frauds and the methods for protecting yourself online. I read it every week, and if you are interested in what the bad guys are doing these days, this is the blog for you.