e-Ethics in e-Commerce

Writing the Rules

Not to get all philosophical on you, but ethics are our concepts of right and wrong. Ethics are the glue that holds our society together. They’re the foundation of our laws, regulations, rules, traditions, manners, conventions and customs. Without ethics, and people’s willingness to live by those ethics, there’s chaos and anarchy.

Welcome to the world of on-line commerce, where rules are vague, enforcement is virtually non-existent and “the skies are not cloudy all day.” In the three-dimensional world we call home, we have all kinds of signposts to point us in the “right” direction, but not so in Cyberburg. Scams, schemes, crackers and hackers abound — and guess what? You, the ethical, honest e-tailer are victimized by the stigma of on-line lawlessness. And, every time another scam is reported in the news, be it a massive ID theft, or some guy who runs up $250,000 in credit card fraud, on-line commerce suffers.

Rule Number One: There Are No Rules
The FTC, the FCC and even the FBI all have programs to monitor on-line commerce. The programs are as effective as an umbrella in a cat 5 hurricane. Even government officials admit that they can’t keep up with the number of complaints they receive from consumers. Obviously, this undermines consumer confidence in e-commerce.

Sure, the number of on-line buyers is growing and fast. In 1999, fewer than 10% of computer users made an on-line purchase. The most recent figures indicate close to 50% of computer users now do some shopping on line, so indeed, the digital marketplace has grown in the past few years. But you have to wonder where we’d be if the black hats weren’t free to rip off an unsuspecting grandmother or hijack your keyboard (key loggers) when you log on to an unsecured site.

Further, can we expect the growth of on-line sales to increase in light of the numerous ID frauds that have been in the news over the past 24 months: Choice Point, Lexus Nexus, AOL, General Motors and the U.S. Army are just some of the big names that have suffered hacker attacks — everything from social engineering attacks to Trojans to brute force dictionary attacks. The bad guys keep coming up with ways to undermine our on-line community of retailers.

You can’t stop them, but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless. If you, and every other honest, ethical individual with a cyber shop, conduct business ethically, consumer confidence will naturally increase. What we need are e-ethics for e-commerce.