Doing Business with Consumers Online: Privacy, Security and the Law

The purpose of this paper is to identify privacy, security and legal issues facing small business in the business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce environment. Forty websites of small businesses based in Australia are examined to assess whether the content on these websites conforms with legal obligations. The study found that many of the websites examined appear not to be complying fully with their obligations under privacy and fair trading legislation as well as with those imposed in contracts with merchant facility providers.