The impact of data breaches on consumers’ attitudes and behaviors

There exists some amount of research regarding data breaches and how they affect consumers’ attitudes and behaviors. However, the amount of studies in this context is still low and more research is required. The research has mainly concentrated on the breached companies’ perspective and how the consumers’ attitudes and behaviors have changed due to the breaches. This thesis investigates how the knowledge of data breaches affects consumers’ attitudes and behaviors, and what kinds of attitudes and behaviors consumers have toward breached companies. The study is qualitative in nature and uses semi-structured interviews to gather data from 10 Finnish interviewees. The consumers’ attitudes and behaviors are affected by the knowledge of data breaches, especially due to concerns that the data breaches create. Furthermore, consumers’ attitudes and behaviors towards companies that have experienced a data breach vary depending on different reasons. The results are mixed whether the consumers would do business with a breached company, or sign-in a service that has experienced a breach. The thesis provides more evidence on how consumers are affected by the data breaches and why companies should pay attention to consumers’ data protection

EU Privacy seals project: Inventory and analysis of privacy certification schemes

The objective of this report is to comprehensively inventory and analyse privacy and related certification schemes in the European Union and, where relevant, at the international level. The report will provide insights into the importance of privacy seal schemes and present information on the operational aspects of these schemes. The report will also help understand the privacy and data protection elements of the analysed schemes and provide and initial analysis of their shortcomings. The report specifically aims to understand whether (if at all) the analysed schemes address the requirements proposed under the GDPR. It will highlight the main convergences and differences between the schemes, who benefits from such schemes and what the impact of such schemes is.JRC.G.7-Digital Citizen Securit

The impact of privacy regulations on the development of electronic commerce in Jordan and the UK

Improvement in information communication technology (ICT) is one of the factors behind growth in economic productivity. A major dimension of this is the use of the Internet in e-commerce, allowing companies to collect, store, and exchange personal information obtained from visitors to their websites. Electronic commerce has many different variants, and is believed by many governments throughout the world to be the engine of economic stability in the future. While electronic commerce has many benefits, there is evidence to suggest privacy concerns are an inhibitor to its adoption in Jordan and the UK. According to Campbell (1997, p.45), privacy in this context can be defined as “the ability of individuals to determine the nature and extent of information about them which is being communicated to others”. The importance of information in e-commerce has increased, because the main success factor for the completion of transactions between businesses and consumers is the companies’ ability to access consumers’ personal details. This conflicts with the consumers’ fear of providing personal information to un-trusted parties, which makes them disinterested in entering contracts via the internet. This research discusses privacy concerns as an inhibitor for electronic commerce by providing a comparison between UK and Jordanian regulations, to establish the impact that these regulations have ameliorating privacy concerns regarding the development of electronic commerce in Jordan and the UK. The interpretive grounded theory approach has allowed the researcher to gain a deep understanding about privacy perceptions of electronic commerce held by the main stakeholders: government, businesses and consumers. Furthermore, through implementing the Straussian grounded theory approach as a data collection and analysis method, two grounded theories have emerged as giving deeper understanding of the situation in Jordan and the UK regarding privacy concerns and how this affects electronic commerce development in both countries.Albalqa Applied University- Jorda

E-commerce in the travel and tourism industry in Sub-Saharan Africa

The e-commerce revolution in business can help African countries expand their tourism industry. Africa, with its great wealth in wildlife and unique resorts, can benefit from the ever increasing user population of the Internet, particularly in the USA and Western Europe where most of the tourists to Africa come from (Internet World Stats, 2004). E-commerce which runs on the backbone of the Internet can help the African tourism industry break into international tourism, thus increasing the flows of the much needed foreign currency. As there was little empirical data on the e-commerce activities in the African tourism industry the researcher first and foremost examined a large number of websites in order to paint a picture of the nature and extent of the e-commerce activities in four -African countries. For comparison, websites of tourism organisations from USA and Western Europe were also examined. The surveys revealed that few of the African organisations are embracing e-commerce and that although some websites were comparable to those of their western counterparts the majority had room for considerable improvement. After examining the websites another survey was carried out to find the current progress of e-commerce adoption and usage from the perspective of the African tourism organisations. Analysis of the data collected showed that e-commerce adoption among the tourism organisations was slow. This led to more surveys being carried out to find the barriers to e-commerce among tourism organisations with information-only websites and those whose websites had limited interactive facilities. These surveys revealed that tourism organisations with information-only websites faced more barriers than those with websites which had limited interactive features. They also revealed that the most common barriers were technological and security and legal barriers. The ultimate survey involved finding out from tourism organisations with fully-fledged e-commerce websites how they overcame the e-commerce barriers. The methods used by these organisations to overcome e-commerce barriers together with recommendations made in the surveys carried out earlier were used to formulate recommendations and guidelines for those organisations intending to adopt and e-commerce. The recommendations and guidelines were tested and results showed that they are helpful and easy to follow