8% of companies and advertising agencies have an email marketing team and Internet marketing has a return on investment 4,300% (Ethical Marketing for Competitive Advantage). Email marketing is a new way of advertising and is increasing dramatically. Internet is used recently as not only as a source of information but also as a place where companies can offer and promote its products. The bombardment of the internet users with constant intrusive advertisements that either they wish to see or they do not wish to see has created problems. These problems range from lack of trust to serious concerns about Internet safety and access to private data. The way email marketing treats our private data is a major concern. Email marketing is an effective way of advertising and much cheaper than any other media (infront webworks) but it is important to put in consideration that each one has his/her privacy, which cannot be accessed.
Email marketing can access personal information from emails. Consumer online life may not seem to be tracked as he/she accesses the Internet. But it is really important for marketers to know what the consumers prefer. Marketers start out by sending emails to people and through this mail they can access consumers’ mails and find out what they like. Melissa Riofrio in her article”Pc World” described this act of invasion privacy, as “It’s totally invisible to users. They have no idea what’s happening”(Pc World). There is a big difference between what “Folks think their privacy rights are online and what they actually are online” (Pc World). This is how consumers get tricked. When they signup for a new service online and when they spot the word privacy policy, they feel safe. The policy entitles some people to have...
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...n by filling a form or ask customers to “set their browsers accept or reject cookies from the sites they visit” (New Eu Regulations to affect email online marketing).
All in all, email marketing is an effective way of advertising and has a high return on investments if used correctly. However, there has been many issues on the way email advertising violates privacy, but the government managed to handle this issue by setting rules that gives consumers the right to feel secured and gives them their rights of privacy and nobody can access it. And anyone who violates these rules will face court and be punished.
Works Cited
Riofrio8, Melissa. "The 5 Biggest Online Privacy Threats of 2013." PCWorld. N.p., 8 Apr. 2013. Web. 14 May 2014.
Gauzente, Claire. "Ethical Marketing for Competitive Advantage on the Internet." (n.d.): n. pag. 6 Sept. 2007. Web. 24 May 2014.
Advertisement agencies use behavioral advertisement, or third party cookies, to track customers on and off their client’s website. This allows them to create specific banner ads that display content viewed and not purchased, in hopes of getting a larger customer return and purchase rate. This practice is increasing among e-commerce and is raising concerns with ethical and privacy advocators.
If a random person came over to you on the street, would you give him your personal information? Would you allow him to follow and record your activities? Most certainly not. Although this answer may be obvious in the physical world, the general populations’ behavior on the Internet is strikingly different. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google retain vast amounts of personal information of their users. Although this practice benefits the user as well, unrestricted profiling can be quite unnerving. Since regulation from the government may impede Internet use, and unless the threat to internet users privacy are shown to exceed the benefits, the government will not regulate the internet, rather we should educate the public how to be more responsible themselves.
Privacy has been a thorny issue especially with the modern cyber crime increase. Every time you go online, you get exposed. You cease to enjoy privacy. The marketers take advantage of this. For example, there are sites you log into online and before you do anything you are prompted to agree to their terms which mostly people agree without reading those terms. You expose your computer to cookies and all manner of online stuff that “steal” your information. Later when you go your email, you find a lot of promotional emails and start wondering when did you sign up for such kind of stuff. This behavior is totally unethical because the sad is that these emails are system generated and when they are directed to you, they fill your inbox without your consent. When the marketers use your email without your concern to channel and ad to you, then that qualifies that act to be unethical even if the ad might benefit you in future.
The year 1997-2000 marked the internet boom with dot com companies appearing on the scene every day. Internet changed the way we used to do business and reach out to the customers on day to day basis. The volume of spam had grown exponentially after internet boom. Spam marketing hackers would highjack the business sites and used them for sending the spam. The price of marketing email spam was much less than paper based or direct mail. With paper based marketing campaign, response from one buyer per 100 mailing was sufficient to even out the expenses whereas in email spam response from one buyer per 100,000 was enough to make profit (Fingerman, 2004). The cost was lower for the sender but it was much higher for receiver as they spend the valuable time r...
As Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn, and Hughes (n.d.) argue, the biggest privacy issue associated with new media is the unintentional public showcasing of private information. This can lead to a damaged reputation, stalking, misuse of this information, hacking and identity theft (Debatin et al., n.d.). This is a serious issue, with about 18% of people admitting to suffering from either of these negatives, in a survey conducted on this issue for the specific case of Facebook (Debatin et al., n.d.).
Internet privacy has been a major issue for its users in the last decade. It is bigger than ever before, as more people join social media cites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These companies, keeping track of our personal data, have a responsibility to make sure our information remains private. Precautions Internet users take to protect their information from being used wrongfully, the government’s connection to this issue, and how the future generation responds to these practices. Consumers’ privacy refers to ability to control when, how, and to what extent the personal information is to be transmitted to others.
The issue on privacy is extremely controversial in today’s world. As the United States’ use of the internet, a global web of interconnected computer networks, expands, so does its problem with privacy invasion. With the U.S. pushing for new laws governing internet use, citizens are finding their privacy being pulled right from underneath them. Web users are buying and selling personal information online as well as hacking users for more information. One may argue that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet, but privacy is a right among Americans, and should be treated as such.
Are the benefits of electronic communication at the expense of our privacy? How does the Internet affect the availability and use of our personal information? The Internet brings another dimension to the issue of privacy. Whether you are voting on-line or buying a book from Amazon.com you must consider how much personal information has been collected about you, with or without your consent, and how it can be used. Policies governing privacy on the Internet are still not clearly defined and many on-line users do not understand how the information they provide will be used. How much...
Today, many web sites on the internet can use "cookies" to keep track of passwords and usernames and track the sites a particular user visits (Cookiecentral.com). But, the use of cookies to track user's browsing habits is becoming a concern of many internet users. These concerned people are beginning to think of cookies as an invasion of privacy. Companies with web sites can use cookies to track what sites you visit frequently and then select specific ad banners to send to you on the web while surfing (Cookiecentral.com). Electronic Frontier Foundation's program director, Stanton McCandlish points out, "The potential problem is that companies without a sense of ethics could be doing [the] same thing and selling addresses to offline marketers" (news.cnet.com). The government should realize the hazards of internet cookies and enforce a ban on their use.
Part of the allure of the Internet has always been the anonymity it offers its users. As the Internet has grown however, causing capitalists and governments to enter the picture, the old rules are changing fast. E-commerce firms employ the latest technologies to track minute details on customer behavior. The FBI's Carnivore email-tracking system is being increasingly used to infringe on the privacy of netizens. Corporations now monitor their employees' web and email usage. In addition to these privacy infringements, Internet users are also having their use censored, as governments, corporations, and other institutions block access to certain sites. However, as technology can be used to wage war on personal freedoms, it can also be employed in the fight against censorship and invasion of privacy.
User Privacy is a sensitive topic at the moment. It is one of the most important factors a person should consider before they give their information away over the internet. Every click or selection you make online is being stored and permanently kept on record that includes anything you may have Googled, investigated or researched. Some people believe that user privacy is dead (Rambam 2011). More and more we are being encouraged to give away more information about ourselves online, and the greatest intrusion into our online activities comes from social networking sites. The lack of user privacy on social networking sites has led to dramatic changes in people’s lives such as targeting by the media and marketing researchers, the buying and selling of user information and other unethical forms of privacy invasion. Online activity is increasingly being used as e...
1. Unknown. Privacy in Cyberspace: Rules of the Road for the Information Superhighway (Aug 2003). Privacy Rights Clearing House. 29th March 2004. http://www.privacyrights.org/netprivacy.htm
...e tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance” (Perlroth). Due to the internet being an easy way to access information companies have developed techniques to track consumers and target advertising to their certain interest.These technique though used by companies are now being used by the government for tracking. One of the techniques used to track involve cookies which are a small text file placed by a web server. However, their use has attracted criticism from some privacy experts that claim that cookies serve as a passage for online predators to monitor a person's internet activity. Due to this claim if you have had problems with viruses or have had your account hacked you are recommended to not just erase your history but cookies as well.
...As more and more marketers are getting into online advertisements that is way the trend of internet marketing is increasing rapidly. Marketers know very well that consumers spend more time on internet, so they started targeting internet users. (The economic times, 2004)
Foxman, E. R., & Kilcoyne, P. (n.d.). Information technology, marketing practice, and consumer privacy: ethical issues. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 12(1), 106-119.