Lee+Barrientos_Portfolio

You can find my article at the following link. [|Here]

Questions for Analyzing Social Issues: 1. What are the social issues associated with a particular IT development? The Social issues associated with this are numbered. The people buying things online expect a product after they have paid and if it is not given to them then they will feel cheated. This creates distrust for people who are trying to sell things online legitimately and no one will trust them. Without this trust, people will pin all of their losses on the company that provides the faulty service, namely Ebay, even if the fault is not theirs. ( maybe say something about market viability is based on trust ) 2. How did the IT development emerge? The online auctions sites are almost as old as the internet itself and they have come to be due to demand for specialty items and/or cheaper items that people can’t find at home or in their own towns. 3. Who are the stakeholders- individuals, institutions, societies who initiate and control the IT developments and are affected by them? The auction site companies, the users of the auction sites, the sellers on the auction sites, and USPS. 4. What are the advantages and disadvantages for the stakeholders? If money is lost to the consumer, the companies that run the auctions and the sellers become less trusted and less used but the people with money. 5. What feasible solutions can be applied to overcome problems? People can apply caution to their purchases and look at a sellers feed back to see whether they have good reviews from a variety of buyers. Also auction sites can apply more strict rules on faulty sales and sellers and figure out some way to limit or cut off their access to a site. 6. What is the social impact of the IT development on human life? This doesn’t really have a big affect on human life, probably just morals. ( no, I disagree, I think there is a huge social impact. I think if you do a search called social impact of on line auctions, some articles tie the success of this to the success of the web marketplace in general) 7. What are the social impacts on local and global communities? ? This may include some or all of the following areas: economic, political, cultural, legal, environmental, ergonomic, health, and psychological. People will become more careful and account for their money more if this trend continues. There will be a disconnection from these sites and from their partner sites (Paypal, etc.). Questions for Analyzing Ethical Issues: 1. What are the ethical issues associated with a particular IT development? Taking peoples money without providing the product is considered unethical and probably doesn’t create the best image for the fake sellers or companies who support these people 2. Who is responsible? The website owners are responsible for their users. Are the owners of websites like ebay the only ones responsible for theft using their site? I would think the sellers would have some responsibility, as well as in some cases perhaps the buyer (checking out the person they're buying from, making sure they making a very easily tracked transaction, etc). 3. Who is accountable? The sellers are accountable for their product or their lack therein. 4. What policies, rules or laws apply to this situation? Well it is against the law to steal money so I would figure that would apply here. 5. What are the alternative ethical decisions? People trying to purchase these various items could search other places and the people taking money could just steal it in person, but that isn’t ethical. 6. What are the consequences of these decisions? Jail for the “sellers” and maybe the buyers would have to spend more money, or not even find what they are looking for. I don't think that's a big issue if the scammer wasn't going to deliver it anyway.


 * __Portfolio Rough Draft __**

In this section I will present the facts about online auction fraud including the example given in the article about the man who did not receive the desk he ordered, or how a tea set was lost in the mail service due to a failure to choose delivery confirmation on their package so the people they sent the tea set to exploited the fact. Also the sale of large and/or expensive items, only to lead to a hoax and the loss of money to the person trying to purchase the item ( References should be with this and you should use numbers if available. There should be numbers on this and I think there are some articles on how ebay developed a rating system to let people know about buyers and sellers and how they developed a way things have to be mailed to comply with policy) Criterion B - The IT background of the Issue ** I will talk about the use of internet auction sites here. May require some research out side the paper for this part.I will talk about all the auction sites listed in the article and what sets them apart from each other. (This should be all about databases and internet speed and protocols)
 * Criterion A - Presentation of the Issue **
 * 

 I will talk about how people are losing money and goods due to the poor choices of other people in the world and they are using the internet as a screen to protect themselves from prosecution.( Expand this more)
 * Criterion C - The Impact of the Issue **

More research needed. I will try to see if there are any other IT solutions in the world that could help with this problem. none seem to come up in the article that I can see presently. (see above where I spoke about solutions ebay has come up with. Maybe you can find some numbers about what the rip off rate was before ebay made these policies ) 
 * Criterion D - A Solution to the Problem Arising from the Issue **

( I would compare ebay to free sites like Craig's list and other online auctions to see about policy and rip off rates )

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 288%;">Portfolio Draft __

=**Presentation of the Issue**= The Internet crime that was reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) the most in 2008 was non-delivered merchandise and/or payment, which affected 32.9% of all complaints and resulted in the loss of an average of $800 per compliant filed. The IC3 is an entire agency set up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to address crimes that plague Internet users. The many of Non-Delivered merchandise and/or payment crimes can be attributed to Auction websites like eBay, Overstock, eBid, etc. due to the easy creation of seller/buyer profiles on the sites with faulty information. With a faulty account, a user could potentially then try to a defraud someone by ordering a product with a fake escrow account or do the reverse of that by selling a product without providing it and taking the money instead. EBay inc. has taken the majority blame for a lot of the current issue because it has the largest company on the market for internet auctions and yet still potentially lets by as many, if not more, fraudulent buyers and sellers on there site than any other internet auction site. Their size also accounts for some of this scrutiny because when a company is big enough to buy and own other large-scale web companies (Skype and PayPal), they should also be able to take care of their customer’s well being.

Word Count: 235 =**The IT background of the Issue**= EBay, one of the most popular Internet auction websites on the net, is built upon an architecture system called a grid computing that uses sets of servers to complete tasks. EBay only needs 50 servers to run the site on, but due to vast capacity and high user activity, the actual site is made up 200 servers in sets of 50 at four locations around the United States. If one of the sets goes out of use due to bandwidth constraints or lost power, the other three locations take over for the lost servers. The server sets have an infrastructure that contain four types of servers; Web servers, application servers, search servers and data-storage servers. Each does a different task that is required to make the site workable. The Web servers are what hold all the web pages for the site and are the surrogates for talk between the search/application servers and the home computer for data retrieval. The application servers are what hold the primary code for running the various applications on the site like auction programs. The search servers go through the information in the data servers to come up with different auctions that might relate to the queries that are input. The Data servers are what hold all information for long-term storage on the site.

This site is fairly easy to use. It is a little dated in its design aspects, but is still very usable. It's browsing options are very clear and set out very well for finding things on the site. Everything you would want can be found on the left of the home page and when a subject is selected, there are subsections available for narrowing down item selections. The even easier choice to use for finding something on the website is the search option which can find specific items immediately. Once an item is selected, you are sent to an auction page for this item. It contains a title and a picture of the item and to the right is the seller information with a rating system for how well they do in selling their items based on buyer feedback. The bid button is right next to the picture of the item and sometimes there is a "Buy It Now" button that gives the buyer the option to not wait until the end of the auction and just purchase the item straight up. As you scroll down the page you will find a description of the item and the shipping and handling information.

Word Count: 420 =**The Impact of the Issue**= Over $72,000,000 in lost money was reported to the IC3 in 2008 for non-delivered merchandise and/or payment related Internet crimes. That is an estimated 90,000 cases in which an average loss was $800 according to the IC3's 2008 Internet crime report. In an average case of a Non-Delivery scam, the victim will become such by not using a well-researched and reputable source for their purchase. Also, they may fall into the trap because the scammer might use fake or hard to trace personal info like a fake email, temporary P.O. Box, fake internet auction website account, or even international information. Due to the prevalence of the issue on the Internet, people are more cautious and less willing to make a purchase online because it the odds of a scam are much higher on the Internet than in a face-to-face purchase. Sites like EBay, Overstock, and even Amazon (a non-auction website) are all affected by lost customers and money every time a non-delivery scammer gets away with their crime.

In the New York Times article, many off shoot scams that are related to non-delivery scams are explained too. Examples are buyers that claim they never got their package through the United States Postal Service when an arrival confirmation isn't purchased for the box. The buyer can then be refunded even if they did receive the package because the credit card company blames the seller for not sending the item at all. It is like long distance stealing. Another example is the discredited escrow services that use their service to try to keep all the money that is sent through it if an item isn't delivered. These sham services are just another scam that should be watched more closely.

Word Count: 290 = = =**A Solution to the Problem Arising from the Issue**= Definite solutions to this problem are not available right now because there are people losing money to this scam even now. There are organizations like the IC3 that can report to the FBI and NW3C and there are sites that can teach you how to protect yourself from the possibility of ending up in the unfortunate situation of lost goods of money. EBay uses a rating program for their sellers so that bad sellers can be ousted for their poor practices and also eBay suggests reliable escrow services for their patrons to use if they unsure of a purchase. These are really just filters for people to use when trying to buy or sell online. This problem is so widespread that it will be a fight to cut off these people from defrauding the innocent people of the internet and that is exactly what the organizations are doing for the cause is fighting for our rights.

Word Count: 156

__Bibliography/Links__ [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [|http://www.fraud.org/tips/internet/onlineauctions.htm]