E-commerce: protecting purchaser privacy to enforce trust

It has been well documented that lack of trust between commercial entities and purchasers can restrict the potential of e-commerce. This may be because the purchaser is required to provide personal information to the commercial entity, which may then be abused, or because the purchaser may be suspicious that after payment has been processed, the goods purchased will not arrive. The challenge for the researcher is to determine the e-commerce model which maximizes the trust a purchaser has when shopping online. In this paper, we focus on the personal information which must be revealed by the purchaser when purchasing online and we present the first comprehensive analysis of personal information distributed in an e-commerce setting from the point of view of the purchaser and his perception of trust in an online transaction. We introduce a measure of trust based on the information distributed to the parties in the transaction and isolate the instances which maximize trust for the purchaser relative to the personal information revealed. This leads us to the establishment of a theoretical framework on which to compare e-commerce protocols and to the development of four new models, all of which, as we demonstrate, are better in concrete ways than the traditional e-commerce model based on secure e-payment protocols. While the overall cost of implementation to the parties remains the same as in the traditional protocols, there is a slight overall decrease in cost to the seller but a slight increase in cost to the deliverer. However, the small additional costs to the deliverer are mitigated by the opportunity for new capabilities and business. Implementation of our work is likely to improve consumer trust and therefore lead to an increase in on-line commerce, especially in countries where privacy recognition is not strong.