The Dark Side of Internet of Things in E-Commerce: Uncovering the Misuse of Personal Information

Title

The Dark Side of Internet of Things in E-Commerce: Uncovering the Misuse of Personal Information

Creator

Doss H.D.; Mishra A.

Description

The world today patronises e-commerce websites and the extent of ease, convenience and possibilities it has brought. E-commerce has positively rattled the world and, most importantly, the economy and gross domestic product of every nation. It has facilitated countries to be progressive and enjoy goods and services from beyond geographical borders. It made possible and common what was once regarded as impossible and far-fetched. E-commerce has not only over-stocked market shelves but also raised the world standard from a business and consumer point of view. E-commerce is defined to be a wide range of business activities in an online space for products, goods, and services (Gupta, 2014). E-commerce is the outcome of an economy that functions on the Internet. Though e-commerce has been present for over thirty years, its popularity and effect have risen enormously in the recent past. It is understood to be the business of buying, selling, and trading through electronic communications. E-commerce has two models in force, the B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer), where the former is economic transactions between businesses, and the latter between a business and consumer. Though both models are popular and well-known, the former is sought after (Tian, and Stewart, 2006). Traditional commercial businesses have also adopted the mode of online trade and business for their goods. If not fully transformed, they have a dual approach of a continued brick-and-mortar structure and also an online portal. For example, H&M, a famous clothing store, has been in existence since 1947. It was in 1998 that they began their online retail store to keep in touch with the changing trends of the market needs. In 2023, there was as many as 1224 million e-commerce websites the world over. This in itself shows the extent to which the world has developed, adapted, and benefited from online businesses and transactions (Gennaro, 2023). The goal of e-commerce websites is just the same as a normal business. They intend to hit their profit margins, increase branding along with sales maximisation and risk minimisation. Apart from this, they have widened the aspect of an economy to now being a global economy where there are communications, interactions, and direct transactions buyers and sellers from various parts of the world. This advancement in business models has had a ripple effect on other aspects and tools of business functions, such as marketing and advertising. Marketing aims at making known to society the availability of certain products, goods, services, and their utility and features so that consumers can make an informed decision while shopping. Conventional marketing involves advertising and letting people know that such a product is available and has certain uses with the hope that promotion turns into a sale. Marketing has been open, standard, and objective. However, the marketing that we see today is powered by data, so it is subjective, customised and sure to catch the interest of consumers. This is happening through several online portals/agencies, and marketers who use data provided by online consumers for their monetary gain. At one point data is beneficial to the consumers in terms of availability of the products at their fingertips and without stepping out from home; on the other hand the data provided by the consumers remains stored with the websites, or in their cloud and subsequently used by such portals and also sold to others without approval from the users themselves. This raises serious concerns about the privacy rights of users and the extent of protection rendered to their data. There is constant debate in the convergence of data, Internet, and e-commerce because of the immense support in its ease and comfort versus the lesser known but great evil of infringement of rights to privacy and personal data. This chapter focuses on understanding how the personal information of consumers misused by e-commerce companies breaking down various roles of big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and digital marketing. 2025 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Source

Internet of Things Vulnerabilities and Recovery Strategies, pp. 223-237.

Date

2024-01-01

Publisher

CRC Press

Coverage

Doss H.D., Christ University, Bangalore, India; Mishra A., Christ University, Bangalore, India

Rights

Restricted Access

Relation

ISBN: 978-104002562-8; 978-103247331-4

Format

Online

Language

English

Type

Book chapter

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003474838-12

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