Advances in Economics and Business Management (AEBM) Print ISSN: 2394-1545; Online ISSN: 2394-1553; Volume 2, Number 10; April-June, 2015 pp. 1045-1048 © Krishi Sanskriti Publications http://www.krishisanskriti.org/aebm.html Ethical Problems of E-Retailing in India Alamuri Megha Gupta 1 and Satish R. Billewar 2 1 JJT University, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, India 2 Datta Meghe College of Engineering Navi Mumbai, India E-mail: 1 megha.alamuri@gmail.com, 1 avg@armiet.com, 2 satish.billewar@gmail.com Abstract—The World Wide Web has changed the traditional way of business culture. So the businesses also started to change the way of perspectives. New concept creates new complexities. The need has arrived to examine the ethics in this new form of business which is known as E-Retailing. Businesses are efficiently implementing new policies and finding the opportunities. E-Retailing has increases the choices for the customers. Internet is providing so many advantages to the consumers for their daily needs. But on the other side, this new platform has created new challenge of unethical and social activities. E-Retailing is growing rapidly from last decade. The customers have started to rise the questions on various ethical and social issues. These problems has become the dark side of E-Retailing. Ethics is always a very complicated to decide right or wrong in any activity. Keywords: E-Retailing, social, ethics, customer, Business 1. INTRODUCTION E-Retailing is the shopping method to do the retailing business electronically on the internet. The companies can advertise their products on the on the websites which performs the role of platform between companies and customers. The customers can choice the product and pay for it electronically. An internet is the backbone of the websites for the businesses. An internet itself is so vast that thousands of people around the world shares their information with the companies for their needs, especially for E-Retailing. E-Retailing provides the ability to do shopping securely where the net banking or credit cards perform through verification and validation of the data. E-Retailing is one of the best platform for both the Companies and the customers. But this also gives access of the companies of personal data and all financial details of customer. The personal data and every small detail about the customer is the big asset for the companies. Now the time comes, where the companies has to decide whether they should use this information or not. If the companies are using it, they can sell variety of products to the customers and they will get big market also. But this is the fraud with the customer who have faith on company. The customer shares his data with the faith that the company has the responsibility to protect his data from all unauthorized access and offences because he is doing business with company. But what if the company itself is misusing it ? 2. OBJECTIVES OF STUDY The main objective of the study is to find ethical and social problems in E-Retailing. The objective is – • To study the ethical and social issues in E-Retailing • To find threats to E-Retailing • To give solutions to both the companies and customers of E-Retailing. 3. AN ETHICAL ISSUES OF E-RETAILING At the early stages of internet, it was just considered as the platform to collect the information. Then from the emergence of retailing businesses, internet has been commercialized. Now, the banks have also started their business activities online. The involvement of money started treat to both the parties – companies and customers. 3.1 Web Spoofing Web Spoofing is the fraud technique where the attacker creates a fake website very similar to original one. Like, attacker creates the website www. icicie.com which is very similar to the website of ICICI bank[2]. When the customer search the website on the google, this fraud website also becomes the option on search page. If the customer selects the option of this fraud website and do all transactions, the customer don’t notice it due to the similarity with the original website. 3.2 Cyber Squatting Cyber Squatting is an activity where the attacker creates the websites just to infringe the trademark of one famous company. The purpose of these websites is to just extort the money from the original company. In 2000, BBC won the cyber squatting case against a firm which created the URL named bbcnews.com. In 2007, Dell also filed case against BelgiumDomains for cyber squatting[1].