Importance of terms and condition

In this part the subject that I am going to write about is terms and conditions that all websites generally should have them to decrease the risk of being damaged by visitors. When a website is accessible to all people, so the owner has not any control over who uses the sites and how the information of the site is used by users. Terms play the role of a contract for owner with users. For example, for websites which do a business and provide any types of goods or services, having these terms and condition will control the process of payment or delivering of that good or service. And visitors are required to click to accept these condition and terms.

Generally there are some reasons that show having terms and conditions are important and essential. First, with this reality that there is business online and with a number of online customers anywhere so the governing law will be on the website owner’s terms and will be according to their country jurisdiction. So there is no ambiguity despite location of the buyer of goods and services. And also when website that provide goods and services, then it is important to outline that these goods or services are provided upon which term and conditions. These terms and conditions should outline the extent of the website’s liability for these goods and services.

I think website owners who are doing businesses with their customers should try to reduce possible risks by providing strongly worded website terms and conditions.

source:http://www.vanksen.com

Privacy Issues

If you read my previous post, I discussed about privacy policy that it comes to website which users give out the personal details on it.

In this part I am going to speak about issues of internet privacy. One of the issues, more in case of emailing sites is about whether third parties are allowed to store or read the email without the informed permission or consent. The other issue is whether the site that collects the customer’s personal information should store or share it. Some deny the existence of internet privacy while others insist the necessity of it. It is obvious that the intent of internet privacy is achieving a controlled disclosure of user’s personal information and complete anonymity is not the aim of internet privacy. When users connect the internet, they connect to it by an IP address. And for security reasons, a website may track these addresses. Some websites may collect the non-personally identifiable information of their users. It means this information that users inter cannot be used to uniquely identify a person. This form of collecting information is acceptable. And some people prefer one form of privacy such as anonymity to the internet. It means allowing them to use fake or anonymous information. But in these situations, sometimes the cases of being stalked will happen.

I think internet privacy is needed an important in revelation of personally identifiable information but where the privacy puts the internet ethics on stake or in danger so it should be limited.    

source: http://www.e-businessethics.com

Privacy Policy

Anytime the personal information is being collected online the visitors and users of the site should pay attention that what kind of information in being collected and how and why this information is collected. In some sites this maybe straight forward but there is a need to prevent the misuse of information. A privacy or confidentiality policy is found directly on a website. In fact, every website should have a privacy policy. When customers enter their information into a website they may not be sure and have worries that for what their information will be used and also how their information is retained.

So, having a privacy policy on your site will ensure the visitors and customers that their entered information will not use for any unwanted and unfair purposes. In addition, a privacy policy will force the website owners to secure the personal information that is stored and it is important that privacy policy be written and very clear to website visitors.

I think every person who is going to run a business website needs to be aware of misuses of information that happen intentionally or unwontedly. Such as using email addresses to send spam mail or misuse of credit card details. So, the implementing of these policies is a great attempt to prevent such crimes and also to have a successful business website.

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Jurisdiction in passive websites:

There are personal jurisdictions for the publication of the information which can affect the population of the person. As I mentioned there is no jurisdiction on passive sites although some courts have done some analysis to find jurisdiction even when passive websites are used by utilizing an effect.

Now jurisdiction in passive and active sites:

If you read my previous posts so you noticed that these websites provide various facilities for users so courts for determining jurisdiction should find out the interactivity level in exchanging of information. Some of cases are as below: asking money from plaintiff by threatening him by registering domain name of plaintiff by non-resident defendant.

The other one is websites that provide advertisement of goods that are used by many users. And the other is doing business via e-commerce.

 Jurisdiction in active websites:

These websites have personal jurisdiction and one case is as bellow;

For instance websites which provide information about the available products in storage, events that happen in near future and the facility for the user to have online purchase.

In next post I will discuss about cases that contains no jurisdiction and also in which condition there is no jurisdiction in passive and active websites.

Jurisdiction

From two decades ago until now, there is a rapid increasing on number of users and over trillion transactions took place by online commerce. So, these vast uses of internet and transactions bring the fact that there are lawyers who have clients regarding the online exchange of information and also selling and buying goods that become disputable because of internet.

Jurisdiction law, a concept that is using by court is divided in three parts. The first are those sites which provide information with no exchange of information from any of visitors. These sites are called passive sites. There is no jurisdiction in these kinds of websites.

The second is website that allows visitors to exchange information. These are passive and active sites. In this type, the level of interactivity will be analyzed by court to provide Jurisdiction and the last law is for website where businesses take place and customers are able to sell and buy the products.

Jurisdiction is taking place for websites with high interactivity.

I am going to talk more about Jurisdiction in coming posts.

Simply Defamation means speeches in which social form is threatened and is divided in two parts. Libel which is when defamatory materials are published via printed or written format and the other one Slander is when spoken words are the tools to defamation. In this part I try to speak how cyber space can be a place for defamation.

One of the issues is publication of problematic speech via internet. When cyber space becomes a place for individual activities, the popularity of cyber space increased when the number of internet users is rising. So in this situation, one of facilities for any user is connection to the internet and be an online publisher. There are some other ways that become problematic. One is the picture that post on a photo sharing websites to show different face. The other way is destroying the reputation of others for example, showing the wrong face of a person because of revenge or any other reason. Or other way would be getting the private information of one individual and posted them online.

I think that increasing the number of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and other networks increases the probability of defamation. Although social networks have many positive effects on people’s social living, it provides a virtual world that everybody can infiltrate the others’ privacy and threat the reputation of victims in cyber space. The focal sad point is that individuals can defame others and conceal behind a virtual name or ID.

source: http://www.writing.upenn.edu

Personal Information Protection

Jack McCoy, a person who paying back all the loans that had to apply for his education received a letter from his university that the laptop computer with all his account information is stolen. The university set up a credit monitoring service for him, but it was expired after one year and he was worried that he is still at risk for being on the thousands of Dollars that someone using his identity could spend.

This was not the only case in 2008 because the data for more people was stolen from there and this was the largest breach of its kind. It is obvious that thieves will not commit identity thefts themselves but they sell the information to those who can make money from these identities.

Most of the credit card companies and banks offer some resources if customers are victim of the internet fraud. But when the company is the victim of crime, then it is unclear that who the main responsible of it is. Some events happen annually in lots of universities and businesses because of a simple mistake or the criminal acts. Many laws dealing with internet protection are not always able to catch up to evolving cybercrimes but, the Personal Data Privacy Act 2009 would require companies to notify anyone affected by a security breach in U.S.

 From my point of view, the importance of personal information protection is increasing daily in result of raise in using of internet. It means that both individuals and also organizations such as banks or loan companies must be careful about the information. Governments must have strict laws and implement them seriously to protect information against theft or misusing.

P.S: www.topics.cnn.com