Abstract – In recent time there is rapid growth in ECommerce market. Major concerns for customers in online shopping are debit card or credit card fraud and personal information security. Identity theft and phishing are common threats of online shopping. Phishing is a method of stealing personal confidential information such as username, passwords, credit card details from victims. It is a social engineering technique used to deceive users. In this paper new method is proposed that uses text based steganography and visual cryptography. It represents new approach which will provide limited information for fund transfer. This method secures the customer’s data and increases customer’s confidence and prevents identity theft.
Keywords – Steganography, Visual Cryptography, Online shopping, Phishing.
I. INTRODUCTION
Online shopping also called as e-tail is a way of purchasing products over internet. It allows customers to buy goods or services using web browsers and by filling credit or debit card information. In online shopping the common threats are phishing and identity theft. Identity theft is a form of stealing someone’s identity i.e. personal information in which someone pretends to be someone else. The person misuses personal information for purchasing or for opening bank accounts and arranging credit cards. As a result of identity theft, the customer’s information was misused for an average of 48 days in 2012. Phishing is a method of stealing personal confidential information such as username, passwords, credit card details from victims. It is a criminal mechanism that uses social engineering. Phishing email directs the users to visit website where they take users personal information such as bank account number, password. It is email fraud conducted for identity theft. In 2013, Financial and Retail Service, Payment service are the targeted industrial sectors of phishing attacks. The method which is proposed in this paper uses both steganography and visual cryptography. It reduces information sharing between customer and merchant server and safeguards customers information.