Comments and FAQ

Here are some answers to your common questions.

What is ebCARD?
ebCARD (electronic business card) is the user's profile containing his / her common information such as name, phone number, address etc. It can also contain other data about the user.

What is LiveFORMTM?
LiveFORM is the form that can be filled out automatically with ebCARD.

How does this whole thing work?
It is simple. User's have ebCARDs stored on their disk and the merchants use LiveFORM for building registration or order forms. Patil Systems sells LiveFORM to merchants for building their forms and helps users to create their ebCARD, at no cost to users, to be stored on their disk.

Do all of my visitors need to have the plug-in installed for these forms to function?
The users don't have to have the plug-in/ActiveX installed. The forms will function just like regular forms without the plug-ins/ActiveX. The plug-in simply provides an additional benefit to your visitors of being able to automatically fill out.

Do I have to change my CGI scripts so I could implement LiveFORM on my site?
You don't have to modify your CGI scripts but only the form needs to be modified. Your old CGI scripts will work just the same.

Since most of my visitors don't have the plug-in installed on their system, I don't see significant benefit in using this product. Why would I spend my 4 minutes and put two extra buttons on my forms?
The very presence of these buttons leads to visitors providing quality information. They now get an ability of storing their data for future use so they would fill out your form more carefully which gets you, the webmaster, quality information that you so badly want.

Can a hacker write a program and download my personal data without my knowledge?
Reasonable checks are built into the software so that it is not easy to steal information from your ebCARD. Like any software, including most of the browsers, ebCARD can be vulnerable to hacker attacks. You should use precaution when creating or using ebCARD and not store any information that you think is extremely sensitive and should not fall into wrong hands. Newer features are always being added including improved security so check back again! Please email us if you need technical information.

Where is my data kept?
The data is stored on your computer system and is under your control.

Can Patil Systems access my data?
No. The data is stored on your disk. If you use plug-in then the data is completely handled by the plug-in which resides on your computer. The older version of ebCARD(for Netscape 3.0 users) uses our server for creating your ebCARD. In this case we neither log the data nor use it for any purpose other than creating your ebCARD.

What platforms is the software supported on?
The software is currently supported on Windows(95/98/NT) operating systems and Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 4.0 and above. The software is supported for backward compatibility on Netscape 3.0 and may or may not function on IE3.0 depending upon which build of IE the user has. However the users can still use the forms to manually fill out the forms.

Is there any way to keep someone who uses my computer from accessing my data?
If you are concerned that somebody who has physical access to your system could read the sensitive data by physically reading these files, then you have two options:

  • you can store incomplete data -- for example, put only the first 12 digits of your 16-digit credit card number into the LiveFORM filler, and fill in the remaining digits by hand. Alternatively, you can use LiveFORM just for non-sensitive data such as your name and address.
  • use password protection.

I use GuestWorld guestbook. How can I add ebCARD functionality to my form I have installed on my server?
Follow this procedure to enable your form to accept ebCARD.


LiveFORM, ebCARD and ebCARD graphic images are trademarks of Patil Systems, Inc.