y are a legal document, and many privacy statements contain language suggesting that consumers must give permission for their data to be revealed to third parties, or the statements might contain instructions for customers to "opt out" of having their data revealed to third parties. Problems arise, however, when the summary privacy statement--which is typically easily found on a company's Web site--does not match the detailed privacy policy of the company. Suits have recently been filed against eBay and Amazon.com charging that the summary statement misleads consumers and provides a false sense of security to Internet shoppers (Sullivan, 2003).
Cookies, or bits of information that are placed on a user's computer without their knowledge, also pose problems for e-business companies. Controversy arose with regard to Internet "cookies" when DoubleClick was identified in 2000 as being able to link an individual's Web surfing history to a name, mailing address and shopping habits.
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