Abstract: A process for authentication that gives users a warning against malicious web applications is disclosed. The disclosed process gives the user an audiovisual when viewing the correct web application. The audiovisual is known as a “totem” in this document. The totem can be an image that is shown to the user, audio that is played to the user, or a video or animation (with or without audio) that is played to the user. The user selects their totem as part of the disclosed process. The totem is stored locally using web storage in the user's browser. The totem can only be accessed by the correct web application, and thus cannot be presented to the user by a malicious web application seeking to impersonate the correct web application. The disclosed process thus gives the user, even one not “computer savvy”, a strong warning indication about a malicious web applications.

Abstract: A process for an advertising system that transfers advertisements and commissions between merchants and advertisement presenters in a no-risk “payment on purchase” way, avoiding click fraud, is disclosed. The disclosed process allows merchants to set an amount of their profit margin for a product to be paid to the presenter of one of their advertisements only upon a consequent successful sale. Further, it allows advertisement presenters, content site owners, to directly select advertisements from a compiled list of advertisements ordered by margin. This allows content site owners to use their knowledge of their reader's purchase interests. The merchant pays the advertising system intermediary the decided margin upon a successful sale, and the advertising system pays the advertisement presenter. The advertising system's payment to the advertisement presenter is subject to a payment transfer function, which obscures the profit margin of the merchant to protect this information from competitors.