Ben Fox
(The Associated Press, Jan 19,2000)
Review
E-commerce is the hottest thing in Singapore at the moment. Artistes from Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS) have been employed by advertisers to promote online shopping. Online shoppers would have all their purchased commodities delivered to their doorsteps, even if they just ordered a few apples from the net. It makes me feel that modern technology, at one hand, is making a lot of things convenient for people, on the other hand, people are encouraged to be lazy.
I have never trusted online transactions since I first learnt about it around four years ago. Maybe I am conservative. I only carry out online transaction when it is absolutely necessary, for instance, I am so intoxicated with a particular commodity/service that I would die if I do not have it or if it is not available in Singapore at all. I still prefer cash transactions in real-life. To the very minimum, I can keep track of how much money I have spent and how much money I have left in my pockets. Even though internet retailers have kept on ensuring that all transactions are confidential, there is still a possibility in a leakage of information. Just look at the "Is Online Shopping Safe?" article. In United States, where technological knowledge is way more advanced than Singapore, credit card database was still hacked into. I could imagine the anger in the online shoppers' eyes and the panic on the retailers' and credit card companies' faces.
I do not mind being labelled as 'conservative' and 'stick-in-the-mud'. I would rather be called names than having to go through the hassles of finding out my credit cards have been misappropriated by an unknown 'entity'. Only till the day when there is a guarantee that the computer systems are no longer penetrable by hackers, then I would gladly participate in online transactions. Wonder when that day will come...in ten, twenty,...fifty years' time?
