Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (108091)	9/8/2000 9:29:44 AM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164687

Glenn, maybe this will make your on-line customers feel more comfortable. >NEW YORK, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Financial services company American Express Co. <AXP.N> said on Thursday it soon would enable its cardholders to avoid revealing account numbers when making online purchases, to combat Internet shopping fraud. The New York-based company, best known for its green charge cards and travelers checks, said its new so-called Private Payments product would allow customers to use random, unique numbers for each online purchase so they would not have to send their card account number over the Web. U.S. financial companies are pressing to devise ways to protect their customers' personal information from being stolen while they surf the Internet and make purchases online. "Consumers have a real fear that their credit card information could be stolen while shopping on the Internet," Alfred Kelly Jr., group president of U.S. consumer and small business services at American Express, said. "This fear is the main obstacle to a big boom in online commerce." MasterCard, a credit card network that competes with American Express, has come up with a similar plan. It recently set up a group to develop digital identifications, similar to PIN numbers, to protect cardholders from fraud when making purchases over cell phones or on the Internet. American Express's Private Payments would be available free within the next month to its U.S. consumer and small business cardholders, it said. The company also said it signed a deal and took a minority stake in Privada Inc., a digital privacy infrastructure provider, to give its customers a product that would allow them to choose how much of their personal information is shared when they browse any site on the Web. This service would be launched later this year, it said. "It lets our customers travel the Web incognito," Kelly said. 17:39 09-07-00