Ecommerce liability

Freshness Warning
This article is over 8 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current.

19 Jun 2003

Is your Web site secure against common hacker attacks? You’d better be sure. Guess just settled a case with the US Government where they were accused of not doing enough to protect consumer data. A security breach leaves you open to lawsuits from your customers, bad press, and now fines from the government.

Guess was fined for leaving customer data vulnerable even though the companies published policies stated that they took steps to protect customer data. This might have something of a chilling effect on public-facing privacy policies. One of my clients was advised by their lawyer not to post a privacy policy. The lawyer’s reasoning was that if you don’t make it public you can’t be sued for not abiding by it.

Trackback from Compendium
June 20, 2003 6:47 AM

Ditching privacy policies?

Excerpt: Adam Kalsey says at least some companies are trying to eliminate liabilities for violating their Web site's privacy policies (for example, if a hacker gets into a customer database) by eliminating their privacy policies.

Philip Tellis
October 31, 2003 12:39 AM

Would be nice if you used the term “cracker” instead of “hacker”


Your comments:

Text only, no HTML. URLs will automatically be converted to links. Your email address is required, but it will not be displayed on the site.

Name:

Not your company or your SEO link. Comments without a real name will be deleted as spam.

Email: (not displayed)

If you don't feel comfortable giving me your real email address, don't expect me to feel comfortable publishing your comment.

Website (optional):

Follow me on Twitter

Lijit Search

Best Of

  • California State Fair The California State Fair lets you buy tickets in advance from their Web site. That's good. But the site is a horror house of usability problems.
  • Simplified Form Errors One of the most frustrating experiences on the Web is filling out forms. When mistakes are made, the user is often left guessing what they need to correct. We've taken an approach that shows the user in no uncertain terms what needs to be fixed.
  • Where do the RSS ad startups fit in? Yahoo's RSS advertising service could spell trouble for pure-play RSS advertising services unless they adapt their business model.
  • The best of 2006 I wrote a lot of drivel in 2006. Here's the things that are less crappy than the rest.
  • Lock-in is bad T-Mobile thinks they'll get new Hotspot customers with exclusive content and locked-in devices.
  • More of the best »

Recently Read

Get More

Subscribe | Archives

8

Recently

invisible Fence (Mar 22)
The New York Times has a paywall now. Sorta. If you don't choose to ignore it.
Black status icon for Chrometa (Mar 17)
Replacing the status icon of Chrometa
Using Google Voice as your voicemail on AT&T (Oct 26)
How I set up my iPhone to use Google Voice as it's voicemail system.
Don Mattingly forced to make coaching change (Sep 17)
New LA Dodgers coach starts to wonder if he knows the rules of baseball at all.
In which Vonage pretends their prices haven't changed (Apr 12)
Translating what Vonage marketing says about their price increase into plain English.
Twitter app competition (Apr 12)
Life as a Twitter app developer is far from over.
Twitter app competition (Apr 12)
Life as a Twitter app developer is far from over.
The rest of the world is not like you (Apr 5)
Normal people are different. Keep that in mind when creating or marketing a product.

Subscribe to this site's feed.

Elsewhere

IMified
Build instant messaging applications. (My company)
SacStarts
The Sacramento technology startup community.
Pinewood Freak
Pinewood Derby tips and tricks

Contact

Adam Kalsey

Mobile: 916.600.2497

Email: adam AT kalsey.com

AIM or Skype: akalsey

Resume

PGP Key

©1999-2012 Adam Kalsey.
Content management by Movable Type.