Internet marketing is a new and exciting marketplace for consumers. It offers easy access not only to an massive array of products and services, but also to rich sources of information that enable consumers to make better-informed purchasing decisions. It also offers the convenience of shopping from the office, and without leaving the comfort of home.
This information-rich medium also serves as a source of vast amounts of personal information about consumers.
Information is a valuable data for anyone who possesses it. Information that is collected through a variety of means can help any organizations and businesses to understand each of their consumers' needs, and help them market their products and services more efficiently to the most targeted individuals.
Commercial websites collect personal information through a variety of means, including registration pages, application forms, order forms, user surveys, online contests, and so forth. These websites also collect personal information through means that are not obvious to consumers, such as using cookies.
Nowadays, privacy is one of the most important concern on the internet. The expansion of the Internet has created a number of privacy issues that society has never encountered before. Many internet marketing allows anyone to do disguised searches, asset verification checks and background checks on any individual for a nominal fee.
Additionally, some websites allows users to order a background check on any individual in the database. This public record report includes property ownership, civil judgments, physical description and summary of assets. Privacy issues on the internet relate to two important concerns. The first concern is, users' ability to check the speed, nature, and order of the information they view.
Spam is a control concern because it violates privacy, steals resources, and compares to receiving a piece of direct mail with postage due.
A second concern relates to the ability of users to address and understand how organizations/businesses collect and use personal information they collect from the internet. Many websites require visitors to identify themselves and provide information about their needs, and as well as other personal data. Some websites track visitors' footsteps through the site by storing a cookie, or identifying string of text, on their computers.
The use of cookies can be an ethical issue, especially because many users have no idea that this transfer of information is happening.
Internet privacy is an important ethical issue because most businesses engaging in e-commerce have not yet developed policies to encourage responsible behavior. This had made some organizations and businesses to sell the information to a third party for a profit, which is a huge concern for consumers who had given their trust.
While there have been international regulatory and self-regulatory initiatives to address these issues, there is no global effort to deal with online privacy. The initiatives that have been developed deal with consumer privacy from businesses and trade organizations.