We see electronic commerce as a profoundly pro-consumer development. It offers consumers a range and variety of products, and a source of relevant information with which consumers can protect their own interests, although it has some drawbacks as well:-

1. Online Identity Theft and Phishing: Online identity theft is the practice of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. The purpose can range from quite harmless activities to a criminal activity like stealing someone’s personal information for one’s own financial gain. Usually it involves phishing or online fraud for a person’s banking information and using that to order goods or transfer money to another bank account. There is no specific legal framework that covers situations where one purchase goods on Internet by electronic transactions.

In India though the Government has promoted e-commerce aggressively, focusing especially on the delivery of services, yet legal controls for online sale of goods have yet to catch up with those for conventional shopping. The Internet allows people to mimic legitimate business more convincingly, reach potential victims efficiently, elude detection by maintaining anonymity, and frustrate enforcement officials by locating (or relocating when detected) in remote jurisdictions that have no relevant law or no serious enforcement.

2. Privacy concerns: The Internet and its ability to marshal and sort vast amounts of information, without the online consumer even knowing is a new and potent threat to traditional privacy values.

3. Online Jurisdiction: Internet is a communication medium without geographical or national boundaries. But the consumer protection legislations are predominantly based on national and local boundaries. To be protected under the present laws in India at the time of electronic shopping, the first thing an e-consumer needs to ensure is that all the parties involved in the transactions are based within national boundaries where his municipal consumer protection laws apply.

Because electronic commerce respects no borders, cooperation and coordination in international law enforcement, using domestic legislations for protection often becomes difficult.

4. Insecurity: It is pertinent for consumers to note that all computer systems cannot be one hundred percent secure; there is always a degree of risk involved in using the Internet for buying goods. Thus, it requires a strict and user-friendly law, which not only provides the security at the time of shopping, but also protects the interest of the e-consumer post transactions.

Finally, there is a subject no one should neglect. The electronic commerce revolution, for all its promise, may widen the divide between the haves and have not’s, between nations and even within nation states. As we celebrate the promise of the digital revolution, we must also acknowledge the threat it poses to individual welfare and to the stability of international order.

Measures For the Protection of E-Consumer

In this electronic age there is a need to protect consumers’ interest and following are the areas of central importance for the effective protection of e-consumers.

1. Correct Information

An informed consumer is self sufficient to look after her/his own interests than an uninformed consumer. Appropriate information on the products is very important for e-consumers as that can help them