Abstract

The genuine benefit of the Internet is its ability to make vast amounts of information readily available and thence easy to manipulate, sort, and compile. This ability has been channeled over the last few years to develop Internet based commerce, which has been termed ecommerce ; consumers to ecommerce are termed econsumers in this paper. The econsumers, while attracted to the convenience and variety of products and services offered on the Internet are wary of participating in it due to concern regarding not only privacy but also protection. One of the challenges of this new engine of global economy is to balance the competing values of protecting individuals' right to privacy and protection against the need for the free ow of information, products and services.