Businesses operating on the Web must be extra careful to use statements that are only true and are not misleading to the customers. Otherwise, they could suffer the same consequences those businesses in the physical world go through.
Ethics & Web Business Policies
One of the biggest issues that comes up when talking about ethics and business on the Web is the use of the e-mail addresses of customers. In the beginning of the Internet, people were rarely promised anything when giving out their e-mail address, Now, most companies will let the user know what, if anything, will be done with the information supplied by the user; but not all companies do, and it is not required in the U.S. for them to do so.
Privacy is one of the hottest and most debated topics in e-commerce. There are many debates going on covering just about every facet possible. There is very little legislatiion that covers privacy on the Internet, and what there is, has become extremely outdated. There have been many attempts at passing legislation, but none have been successful. For the most part businesses have been able to do a good job monitoring the use of customer information, so some believe that no legislation is needed. For companies that offer different features on their sites, they generally offer one of two options for signing up: opt-in or opt-out. With the opt-in feature, the business assumes that the user does not want to receive various notifications from the company, but does offer the option if the customer wants it. In the opt-out option, which is more common, the customer receives various notifications until they decided they no longer want them, which at that time they 'opt-out'.
One other area that has come under fire has been the communication with children over the Internet. There have been different advances in how the activities of children on the computer can be controlled, but even these are not fool proof. Disney is one site that offers a variety of options for registration.