Legal and Ethical Issues in Web Technology

This report discusses the legal and ethical issues that organizations may face in developing a web application for online shopping. It covers topics such as data privacy, transaction issues, property reselling, and more.

Running head: WEB TECHNOLOGY
WEB TECHNOLOGY
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
Any organization having a particular shopping wen application might have been
through various legal and ethical issues. This organization discusses regarding a specific
start-up company which is trying to introduce a web application and this report lists the issues
that could be faced by the organization from the aspect of legal as well as ethical1. The legal
issue that has been selected for this particular assignment includes the necessity of data
privacy given the fact that they will keep personal as well as financial data on shoppers. The
ethical issue that is selected for this particular report are the things that they could do with the
user data that they have because the keep hold of huge number of user profiles and a record
of the activities carried out by them which might give clues to the interests that they hold2.
This would be valuable data to any sort of marketing organization.
Discussion
Legal issue
Transaction issues: The Australian Consumer Law is responsible for governing any
sort of transactions that is undertaken in any of the e-commerce websites in Australia.
Therefore if the organization does not abide by various laws and rules, the organization might
get into very major problems under violation of laws3. In case the business fails in providing
clear as well as complete description of the product, its cost as well as purchase details, data
regarding delivery which includes data about when the customer would receive the product
1 Dove, E. S., Joly, Y., Tassé, A. M., in Genomics, P. P. P., Committee, S. P. I. S., Burton,
P., ... & Hveem, K. Genomic cloud computing: legal and ethical points to consider. (2015).
European Journal of Human Genetics, 23(10), 1271.
2 Gu, Z., Wei, J., & Xu, F. An empirical study on factors influencing consumers' initial trust
in wearable commerce. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 56(1), 79-85. (2016).
3 Fernie, J., & Sparks, L. (Eds.). Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new
challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan page publishers. (2018).

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and many other data regarding refunds and exchange, The Australian Consumer Law could
impose penalties on the business.
Property reselling: reselling of property is a major issues that could be faced by the
organization, this is faced when the employees within the organization as well as the
customers of the organization does not have enough knowledge regarding the rights of
reselling.
Buyer’s striking: this issue is faced by the organization without even the knowledge
of the employees. Various hackers of cyber criminals make use of social engineering
strategies for the purpose of tricking customers of the organization to get maximum benefit
out of a system of under attacking4. The attackers tend to gather the credential details of
various customers and then utilize them against numerous online activities of the victim like
asking regarding the customer’s favourite dress, these sort of questions are common
challenge questions that are used by numerous sites for the purpose of login as well as
authentication of account5. In case the site is tricked in providing the password after the
question for challenge is provided, then the customer using the same login ID as well as
password would be taken down.
Guessing passwords: the most common practice that is being used by hackers include
guessing the passwords of the users. This occurs when the user sets easy passwords that are
easy for guessing, such as birth date, birthday, name of a family member, own name, name of
the spouse, date of marriage and many more. These passwords are not only easy for guessing
by hackers but also by common people. The guessing of passwords by hackers might result in
4 Islam, J. U., & Rahman, Z. The impact of online brand community characteristics on
customer engagement: An application of Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm. Telematics
and Informatics, 34(4), 96-109. (2017).
5 Albury, K., Burgess, J., Light, B., Race, K., & Wilken, R. Data cultures of mobile dating
and hook-up apps: Emerging issues for critical social science research. Big Data &
Society, 4(2), 2053951717720950. (2017)

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successful output with the use of manual as well as automatic mechanisms. The manual
methods works only in the aspect of guessing, this process is time taking and has less chances
for success and would only result positive6. When the attacker has a good sense of knowledge
regarding the victim as what are their likings, basic data regarding them and their family
including their known relatives. Some more factors that could be guessed include unique
pattern of the user which is used by him commonly. The method that is automated in nature is
faster compared to the manual method7. It has high rate of success and it is very easy to
perform as well. Some of the techniques that fall under the automated attack include
dictionary attack, many more tools exists that helps a specific attacker in guessing the ID of
the user as well as the password in a combination manner.
Ethical issue
Privacy issues: in case of online business, privacy proves to be a major issue which
has the ability to create issues for the business as well as customers. Customers tend to share
data with the business online and they have the expectation that sellers would keep their data
confidential. Only one minor mistake which results in leakage of valuable data of a specific
customer, the organization would lose their potential customers completely, it would also lose
its image as well as reputation. Besides this, the issue would be linked with serious legal
issue. The organization might get subjected to major issues according to the Australian
privacy laws. If the business has led to the exposure as well as advantage for the business in
an online format, then it would certainly give rise to various legal problems as well which
could be avoided with the help of remembering the rules as well as laws that are framed by
the government of Australia. According to various reports it has shown that the total amount
6 Casanovas, P. Semantic web regulatory models: Why ethics matter. Philosophy &
Technology, 28(1), 33-55. (2015)
7 Sugiura, L., Wiles, R., & Pope, C. Ethical challenges in online research: Public/private
perceptions. Research Ethics, 13(3-4), 184-199. (2017).

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of data privacy leaks in the year of 2010 had been around 662 and as the time passed by, the
number had increased to great extent. This might create a major issue for the organization
because the enforcement of privacy as well as its monitoring is not very easy task. Various
silly activities with the customers’ data might lead to serious issues for the organization.
Access control: access control is another issue that might be faced by the
organization. This might create issue when a particular employee accesses the computer of a
specific user and leaks the data within the organization. This leaked fata then might get
leaked out of the organization as well which would not only be harmful for the employees but
also for the entire organization.
Usage of personal data: one more issue that can be faced can be due to the usage of
personal data of customers. Customers would share their personal data with the site for the
purpose of carrying out various transactions, hence they expect that the data would be kept
safe by the organization and not misuse it for any other purpose8. If the data of customers
would be used for the purpose of finding sales to present customers and hence have an idea
regarding their patterns of interest. Security threats on the data could prove to be a serious
concern for the organization. Secondary use of data is also an issues that could be faced by
the organization.
Conclusion
From the above discussion that has been carried out in this particular report, it could
be concluded that in the process of developing a specific online shopping application, an
organization might face numerous legal as well as ethical issues. In some cases the
employees or the entire organization might not be aware of these issues. And the issues might
8 Rodríguez-Triana, M. J., Martínez-Monés, A., & Villagrá-Sobrino, S. Learning Analytics in
Small-Scale Teacher-Led Innovations: Ethical and Data Privacy Issues. Journal of Learning
Analytics, 3(1), 43-65. (2016).

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cause serious damages to the organization without them knowing. In some cases the ethical
issues might be correlated with the legal issues, which means certain ethical issues might
have some outcomes that might be legal in nature. This particular report discusses regarding a
specific start-up organization that aims in introducing in a web application which would be
helpful for the purpose of buying, returning, replacing numerous products. This report
chooses a particular legal and a particular ethical issues that could be faced by the
organization during the development of the web application.

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References
Albury, K., Burgess, J., Light, B., Race, K., & Wilken, R. Data cultures of mobile dating and
hook-up apps: Emerging issues for critical social science research. Big Data & Society, 4(2),
2053951717720950. (2017)
Casanovas, P. Semantic web regulatory models: Why ethics matter. Philosophy &
Technology, 28(1), 33-55. (2015)
Dove, E. S., Joly, Y., Tassé, A. M., in Genomics, P. P. P., Committee, S. P. I. S., Burton,
P., ... & Hveem, K. Genomic cloud computing: legal and ethical points to consider. (2015).
European Journal of Human Genetics, 23(10), 1271.
Fernie, J., & Sparks, L. (Eds.). Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new
challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan page publishers. (2018).
Gu, Z., Wei, J., & Xu, F. An empirical study on factors influencing consumers' initial trust in
wearable commerce. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 56(1), 79-85. (2016).
Islam, J. U., & Rahman, Z. The impact of online brand community characteristics on
customer engagement: An application of Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm. Telematics
and Informatics, 34(4), 96-109. (2017).
Rodríguez-Triana, M. J., Martínez-Monés, A., & Villagrá-Sobrino, S. Learning Analytics in
Small-Scale Teacher-Led Innovations: Ethical and Data Privacy Issues. Journal of Learning
Analytics, 3(1), 43-65. (2016).
Sugiura, L., Wiles, R., & Pope, C. Ethical challenges in online research: Public/private
perceptions. Research Ethics, 13(3-4), 184-199. (2017).