ecommerce Privacy and Confidentiality

As of 2025, laws governing internet privacy exist but vary widely in scope and enforcement, leaving significant gaps in protection. Public information remains easily accessible, and companies routinely track, index, and analyze individual purchases, often with limited oversight or consent. Personal data, including email addresses, continues to be traded digitally across platforms and third parties, fueled by an ever-growing data economy. The loss of privacy and confidentiality persists as a tradeoff many accept for access to increasingly advanced technology, though debates over regulation and user rights continue to intensify. This revision acknowledges the existence of privacy laws (like GDPR and CCPA), updates the context to reflect 2025, and preserves the original sentiment about the privacy-technology tradeoff.

Many courts have discovered that they can scan legal documents pertaining to divorces, trials, felonies, and misdemeanors and store them digitally. Besides easy retrieval and low cost of maintenance, the other advantage is that they can be easily indexed and searched. The disadvantage is that anyone with a browser can access these documents from anywhere in the world. The crux of the matter is not that the information can be accessed, but how easily. The chances of this information being used for malicious purposes rise as it becomes available to more people.

• Advantage of digital Information Technology
  The advantage of digital information technology in accordance with computer technology after going through the process of digitalization, the information you enter will be turned into a series of binary numbers that make up the information in the form of digital code. The digital code will be able to be manipulated by computers.

Before the Internet was widely used, finding public information took time and effort. People had to go to a public library or government building to access this type of information. But this requisite is no longer true; all that is needed is a browser and a connection to the Internet.

• Marketing and Databases
  Marketers can track almost anything you buy and technology enables them to track, index, and analyze your purchases. Given the enormous appetite of marketers and the equally enormous databases that hold consumer information, privacy is rapidly disappearing. As soon as you fill out a product registration card, the vendor has learned some information about you, and can then trade that information digitally. Most consumers probably wouldn't mind data gathering and analysis if it were used only for targeted advertising. However, unrelated items correlated together can result in a misuse of sensitive information, leaving the consumer with a mailbox full of "junk," either paper or digital.

In the spring of 1997, the U.S. Social Security Administration decided to allow citizens to access their retirement projections on the Web. The user had only to enter his or her social security number and birth date. However, the SSA soon discovered that malicious individuals who had access to both pieces of information could get other people's projections. Many such individuals were caught prying into others' accounts. The SSA promptly closed the site.
As a service to Social Security participants, the SSA site was a good idea. However, the Internet security infrastructure was not strong enough to protect this information. Anyone with someone else's social security number and date of birth could masquerade as that person. How did the malicious individual get the social security number? From several sources: Every year, the U.S. Postal Service delivers IRS Form 1040 to most households. The address label on this form contains the recipient's social security number. Underground Web sites also trade in pirated social security numbers.
Sensitive information any information, the loss, misuse, or unauthorized access to or modification of which could adversely affect the national interest or the conduct of federal programs, or the privacy to which individuals are entitled under section 552a of title 5, United States Code (the Privacy Act of 1974), but which has not been specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order or an Act of Congress to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.

In the next lesson you will learn about some of the jurisdictional issues in electronic publishing.

Click the Exercise link below to complete an exercise on Internet privacy issues and privacy law.
Privacy Confidentiality - Exercise