#30DaysOfTesting - Day 28: ethics
Identify potential ethical issues with the use of ecommerce data. What are some public examples?
Came across this excellent resource outlining various types of ethical issues and how you can avoid them. I’ve curated the key points from 3 of varying degrees:
Failing to put up accurate product details
eCommerce is different from traditional retail. Your customers cannot touch the product they will buy. eCommerce customers don’t get to see the exact item they’ll receive. Therefore, it’s important that you make the effort to list your products accurately, completely, and honestly.
Data theft & security breaches
Hackers can do a lot of damage to your customers with [sensitive] information such as:
Personal information, like their address
Email addresses and a password, which they may share across many accounts
Purchase history (particularly important if you sell sensitive products)
You need to take action to ensure you sell authentic products. You’ll get the blame if the customer finds out. (Oh yeah, it’s illegal too!)
Not abiding by online selling laws and regulations
Data compliance and privacy laws
Tax regulations (think about selling across state and national borders)
Online marketing laws like the CAN-SPAM act and laws about advertising disclosure
International regulations, like those in the European Union
Product-specific regulations (for example, you can’t sell alcohol to customers under 21)
Resource: https://www.nchannel.com/blog/ethical-issues-in-ecommerce/
The ones I’m most familiar with are to do with abysmal data/security breaches. Some from the hall of shame:
The breach at eBay Inc was poised to be one of the biggest data breaches in history, based on the number of accounts compromised. Around 145 million records were accessed by hackers that contained passwords as well as email addresses, birth dates, mailing addresses and other personal information. The hackers got the login credentials of a small number of employees that allowed them to gain access to eBay’s corporate network.
More than 70 million credit and debit card accounts of customers were impacted by the breach that happened in the U.S stores of Target Corporation. This breach was as a result of compromised point-of-sale terminals which were hacked to get customer data during the busiest shopping season of the year.
Starbucks app was hacked twice in a gap of few months, where in hackers stole money from several Starbucks customers by gaining access to their credit card information through the app and using the autoload function. Criminals were using Starbucks accounts to access consumers’ linked credit cards. Taking advantage of the Starbucks auto-reload function, they could steal hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes.
These examples were pulled from App Knox. Check out the full list, along with common cyber threats ecommerce companies should keep an eye out for: https://blog.appknox.com/top-cyber-threats-ecommerce-companies/
