Discussion Paper
Glossary
| Account aggregators | online services that collect data from individuals’ multiple financial accounts and upload it to a single location on the Internet. |
| APEC | Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation - a forum for facilitating economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region. APEC has worked to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers across the Asia-Pacific region. See www.apec.org. |
| Bandwidth | the amount of data that can be sent through a given communications circuit per second. |
| Broadband | a high bandwidth connection to a network which is always on. |
| Business | any legal entity in a commercial or professional capacity that sells goods or services to consumers directly or indirectly. |
| Clickstream | the virtual path or trail a user makes when surfing a website or the Internet. Clickstream analysis allows marketers to determine consumers’ usage patterns. |
| Consumer | a natural person who seeks, acquires or uses goods and services for personal, family or household use. |
| Cookie | a mechanism that allows a website to record consumers comings and goings, usually without the consumer’s knowledge or consent. |
| Dial-up | relates to network client access to a LAN or WAN via telephone lines. |
| Electronic commerce | commercial activities that are carried out through electronic networks including the promotion, marketing, sale, order and delivery of goods or services. |
| Expert Group on E-commerce | a group of professionals involved in e-commerce related industries appointed by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer with the intent of providing advice on e-commerce related policy. |
| Goods and services | the full range of consumer purchases whether delivered physically, electronically or by any other means. |
| Hacking | the process of gaining unauthorised access to computer systems for the purpose of stealing and corrupting data. |
| Mobile commerce | a subset of e-commerce and refers to electronic transactions carried out via a mobile terminal such as a phone, a personal digital assistant, or a laptop configured for wireless access to the Internet. |
| Modem jacking | a technique used to alter the Internet access and Internet Service Provider of victims without them being aware of it. |
| ODR | Online Dispute Resolution – Alternative dispute resolution services offered entirely by electronic means. |
| OECD | Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – International organisation that provides a forum for discussion on issues of economic and social policy. See www.oecd.org. |
| Opt-in | advertising approach, in which businesses are able to send commercial e-mail to consumers who have expressed a desire to receive such e-mail. |
| Opt-out | advertising approach, in which businesses are able to send commercial e-mail to consumers until they indicate that they do not wish to receive such mail. |
| SET | a standard that enables secure credit card transactions on the Internet. |
| Signposting | the positioning and referencing of information on a website. |
| Spam | unsolicited commercial advertisements or messages distributed online. |
| Spoofing | forgery of an e-mail header so that the message appears to have originated from an entity or location other than the actual source. |
| Spyware | software that monitors and transmits what consumers are doing on the Internet without their consent. |
| Trust mark (Webseals) | hallmark that businesses can display on their website when specific criteria regarding trading practices have been met. |
| Virus | a program or piece of code that is loaded onto a computer without the users’ knowledge. |
| Web-bug | a piece of code that, when embedded in a message, may be used to send unauthorised information about users offsite. |
| Web-casting | a real-time transmission of encoded video under the control of the server to multiple recipients who all receive the same content at the same time. |
| WiFi | short for wireless fidelity and is meant to be used generically when referring to an over-the-air interface between a wireless client and a base station or between two wireless clients. |
| Worm | a program or algorithm that replicates itself over a computer network and usually performs malicious actions, such as using up the computer’s resources and possibly shutting the system down. |
Previous: Appendix D - Internet Survey
Contents
