Raising a red flag on global WWW privacy policies
Global e-commerce has become a reality for many as a result of the worldwide reach of the web. Although personal information privacy concerns have been around for hundreds of years, the introduction of global c-commerce and its associated technologies presents privacy concerns anew. The Global 500 companies are expected to be leaders in the use of technologies and business practices. This preliminary study examines web sites of the Global 500 and shows that different countries greatly vary in their use of privacy policies on their web sites and their use of seal programs as visible signs of attention to privacy concerns. Web sites from 12 of the 25 countries represented in the Global 500 have no privacy policies. Slightly more than 30% of Global 500 Web sites provide privacy policies or appropriate links to policies on their home pages. Comprehensive privacy policies to address all privacy dimensions (notice, choice, access, and data security) are less common. In addition, Privacy's notice dimension has drawn the most attention from each continent, yet more than one-half of the Global 500 Web sites who have privacy policies failed to address the access element of the privacy dimension.
privacy policy global e-commerce seal programs privacy dimensions