Value Congruence and Trust Online: Their Impact on Privacy and Pr ...

Medical information can also be very sensitive. With the advances in data warehousing and data mining technologies, insurance companies can access information on health and genetics which gives them a greater ability to discriminate between patients with different risks (Thatcher and Clemons, 2000). This can lead to an individual either being charged higher prices for insurance or being denied coverage. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has drafted medical privacy rules that went into effect in April, 2003 and restrict the amount of information that can be disclosed to others about patients.

In spite of these regulations, many still question the information related activities of the above-mentioned organizations and other entities. Most of these laws have been in place for some time and need to be updated for the information age. In other words, they have not been sufficient to alleviate consumers’ concerns with privacy issues in the e-business setting.

The U.S. Congress is currently considering more legislation, including anti-spam legislation intended to reduce the abuse of personal information (Krim, 2003). Currently spam accounts for about 40% of all email traffic at an estimated cost between $8 billion and $10 billion a year (Krim, 2003). It has become enough of a concern that many major Internet Service Providers (ISP) are suing spammers for damages and trying to get a court order to stop them (Krim, 2003). Many spammers have used questionable tactics like harvesting emails from websites, randomly generating likely email address to send spam, and using the unsubscribe link in the spam to confirm email addresses (Krim, 2003). Some individuals are so irritated by the spam that they have posted spammer’s names and addresses on the Internet while others made death threats (Krim, 2003).

Ranganathan and Ganapathy (2002) found that many consumers are unwilling to reveal personal information over the Web even with assurances from online firms, and that privacy is a key dimension to online business-to-consumer (B2C) success. Wang et al. (1998) indicated that