Marketing Essentials 2012Chapter 6:
Legal and Ethical IssueseMarketing FeatureInternet Crime and Permission Marketing
The issue of Internet crime has become such a major problem that the U.S. government has an Internet Crime Complaint Center. Its definition of Internet crime is "any illegal activity involving one or more components of the Internet, such as Web sites, chat rooms, and/or e-mail." Internet crimes related to marketing involve fraud, copyright infringement, identity theft, and spam. Fraud often involves payment for services that are never performed or products that are not delivered. Copyright infringement occurs when authors and entertainers are not paid because their work was illegally downloaded. Identity theft occurs when hackers break into a company's computer operations and steal data or when consumers provide personal information not knowing it is being used for illegal purposes. Spam is unsolicited e-mail or spamdexing on a search engine. Marketers that want to legally use the Internet to send information to customers ask customers if they want to "opt in" or "opt out" from receiving information from them via the Internet. Thus, consumers give businesses "permission" to communicate with them in permission marketing. Innovate and Create
Discuss the ramifications of Internet crime and the future of Internet marketing. How may legitimate businesses be affected if Internet crime continues to increase and spammers become more sophisticated? Have students conduct a survey of at least 20 students with regard to e-mail spam and spamdexing. Ask if they receive e-mails from businesses. If they do, continue the survey by asking them to recall how they "opted in" from receiving e-mails from companies from which they have made purchases. Ask if they ever bought something after spamdexing (visited search engine and was sent to an unrelated link).  | 
