Considering this reluctance and to stop the possible drain of revenue, Privacy partnership, a group of leading developers and supervised by TRUSTe have designed a campaigne to promote the guidelines regarding online security. The campaign already has gained support from giants like Microsoft, AOL, Excite Inc., Lycos, Netscape. Officials from Microsoft terms it as a "grass-roots campaign" to increase consumer awareness about the strategic importance of online privacy, and have urged others to join the community as well.
In 2001 Microsoft was accused of engaging into unfair and deceiving practices by dozens of customer privacy groups and asked the FTC to ban the release of the than new windows XP because it used .Net technology which was incorporated in the unique feature of XP's Passport authentication system, which allowed user to log in once and stores their id and password in its database. This facilited users to avoid repeatedly enter their ids and passwords also it had the hailstorm and electronic wallets services, which collected crucial information like credit card details which was released at the users discretion.
In answer to this microsoft made some changes in the technology and made it more secure by creating logs for consumers and included affirmative consent of users and explicit opt-in to release any private and crucial information which made the system more stronger.
The US (FTC) believes that the absence of mandatory privacy regulations has barred e-commerce from using its potential. couple of surveys have suggested that privacy concerns led to losses in sales of US$ 2.9 billion in 1999, and up to US$ 18 billion in 2002. The FTC has constantly been trying to know whether online privacy issues can best be left with companies to self-monitor, or whether the federal government should intervene.
Reference- BBC, Microsoft,
Hi Rowan. I strongly agree with you that the possibility of identity theft discourages consumer from engaging in online transaction which is crucial in enhancing overall e-commerce economy. Although, there have been numerous measures to counter the negative effects of on-line transaction such as identity theft and fraud, none of them seems to have been truly successful. It is good to know that some from private sector has at least come up with suitable measures to decrease the degree of invasion of online privacy. I would love to see the results of this action initiated by them and hope this would be a one giant step toward eradicating the bad side of online commerce
ReplyDeleteprivacy issues can best be left with companies to self-monitor, or whether the federal government should intervene?
ReplyDeleteFor example , In India privacy issues have not been raised as much as they are in Europe, China. India do not have strict privacy laws. There were data privacy issues which came up few years back in the call centers. Consumers from western world were concerned about their data being stolen and sold. But companies have cracked down that issue and the outsourcing industry is still thriving. Therefore it can be done by multinationals itself.
I agree with with what you have mentioned in your last paragraph. Privacy concerns have definitely led to huge losses in sales. Privacy concerns have had negative impact on the overall online marketing business because it discourages consumers from using or simply logging on to a web site for fear of having their valuable information stolen. For example, when a new business launch a website, unless the company has already established its presence in the industry, it would be very difficult for the new business to attract new consumers because consumers are reluctant to reveal their information or use their credit cards for online transactions. As a result, it would make the new company really difficult to engage in online transactions or make customers buy their products, no matter how good the quality of their products is.
ReplyDeleteI am of the opinion that Federal government should intervene and implement strict regulations and see to it that customers or users have the power to choose the extent to which they wish to disclose information while making online transactions. For, any unregulated market will try to use unethical yet legal means to further its business interests. Therefore, FTC has no choice other than to enforce new policies and regulations, so as to restore consumer confidence with respect to e-commerce.
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