E-commerce is an expanding area. 'eBay' is the buzz word for sellers and buyers alike. Many small businesses start out with eBay. Once on eBay, the tide can take a small business to a million dollar business.

One of the major assets of a successful eBay seller is their eBay account. Through the eBay user ID, a seller establishes a reputation. For online communications in eBay, your account with user ID establishes who you are. Once an account is misused by a third person, it is hard to detect and prove who the initial owner of the account was. Account theft has also become an issue in eBay for which many new schemes have been introduced. Using secure websites, smart passwords, and being aware of site impersonations can help you prevent account theft by a third party.

Expanding businesses using eBay have to consider another issue regarding account theft. Most business men start out with an eBay account to sell products. As their business grows, they realize they have to expand their staff and include employees to handle the huge volume of selling and buying through their account. Business owners then have to provide access to their employees to their eBay account to manage their business. What if account theft happens right under their nose? Once an employee has gained the knowledge of the username and password, there is no guarantee that this information will not be misused.

There are a few smart ways, in which an owner and seller in eBay can safeguard their account. One way is to use the ‘remember password’ feature in most browsers. This can be used during office hours when the employees use the owner’s machine to access and work on the eBay accounts. This ensures that the person working on certain machines have access to the eBay accounts but have no knowledge of the password. The passwords are saved locally in the computer and hence facilitates logging in to specified accounts though a web browser.

Although ‘remember password’ may work in some cases, there is also a need to set up another kind of restricted access. Using ‘remember password’, may prove to be unsecure as anybody who has access to the computer has visibility into the eBay account. An innovative work around to this problem may be to obtain a fingerprint reader for this purpose.

A fingerprint reader/scanner is a device that uses a person’s fingerprint as identity. Hence in addition to the password or in lieu of it, one can use their fingerprint to gain access to a computer or any website. In the past, fingerprint readers and scanners were used in government and high security projects. In the recent years, these techniques are made available for home use and office use. A personal USB fingerprint scanner is available for less than $100 and biometrics can be used as a password to gain access. A fingerprint scanner can be a good solution for providing the easy access that employees seek and the security the employers prefer.

A fingerprint reader can be used in offices to map an employee’s fingerprint with the owner’s password. The owner’s machine can then be configured to use this fingerprint reader to provide access to the employee to the owner’s eBay account. With the help the fingerprint reader, the employee can then enter the account in the place of the owner to manage his/her account and store. The fingerprint reader and the machine would be necessary for the person to be able to access the eBay account. Both of these being at the disposal of the owner, account security is ensured in the office.