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Resources for E-Commerce Vendors (Pending)
Submitted by: Eve Maler
This scenario focuses on the typical set of information that we hand over to online vendors repeatedly, and the desire to avoid sharing the data "by value", instead focusing on how to share it "by reference" (pointers).
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- Bricks and mortar
Maya recently became extra-concerned about identity theft and fraud because a friend had his bank account stolen from, and she has decided to buy a shredder so she can dispose of old bills, credit-card offer junk mail, and outdated backup CDROMs. She visits her local Staplers store, prepared to buy a shredder that day (with cash! hey, it's anonymous), but can't find a shredder in stock that handles CD shredding. - Comparison shopping
She goes to Google and a couple of specialized comparison-shopping sites and plugs in search terms like paper shredder cdrom, but can't easily figure out which ones have the features she wants, but the prices at Staplers.com, the site for the local store she was just in, look good and she decides to just go ahead and shop there. - Clicks and mortar
Once Maya is at Staplers.com, she finds a suitable shredder and adds it to her shopping cart (which is, so far, "anonymous" with respect to everything but some sort of device identification, possibly based on a cookie, associated with her browser session). - Checkout
When she goes to check out, Maya is asked for consent and personal data for various purposes. First, she must choose a username and password, on the theory that this will make her future purchases at the site easier. She also has to provide her home address and phone number (though this isn't so onerous because her browser auto-fills the data) so Staplers can transfer the shredder to its outsourced shipping company for delivery, and her credit card number, its security code, its expiration date, and her real name (the name the card was issued to) so Staplers can be paid for the purchase. She might be given the opportunity to provide some third-party store loyalty program information, to get "extra points" from transactions here. Finally, she is asked to click "I Agree" certifying that she agrees to Stapler's site terms of use and has seen its privacy policy.
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