Introduction
In today’s technology based world and people’s need for social recognition, information, and online shopping, many join several online websites. People provide their personal details such as email address and phone numbers with online websites. The only way people can join these websites is by sharing their personal information. Although there are positives of joining these websites, the negatives outweigh them over a period of time.
Attention-Getter
Even though people give consent to online websites to use their personal information, there are no ways to regulate the information and keep them away from spammers.
Thesis statement
The paper will discuss the problems faced by people when they share their personal email addresses with online websites and lack of regulation. Common complaints are about data protection, spamming, and unconsented mailers; after they provided their personal emails to online shopping, social media, and email clients.
First Supporting Paragraph: Data Protection
Supporting Details: Online websites ensure while signing up to new customers that their personal information is secured and won’t be shared. But, in reality online websites sell personal data to other sources as a means to earn revenue. Also, there are applications that are capable of extracting email details from websites and collect information. For example: while operating Facebook many customers use applications that require customers to share their personal information with the application. This leads to sharing of information with the application, which can be sold to email marketers for making money. It is important that such ways to extract information should be regulated as many customers are unaware of the severity of the mistake they make. It is important that customer information is kept private and easy access to personal information is retracted. These applications or data extracting widgets need to be blocked by the original site to ensure that all details of customers are not copied and customer can be assured of protection while providing personal information to online websites (Ferguson, 2014).
Second Supporting Paragraph: Spamming
Supporting Details: Customers that provide their email address to online shopping websites end up facing a collection of e-mailers on a daily basis. This can become problematic when the customer has registered at several online websites as they inbox can be flooded with useless emails that could have been bundled into one email for the day. Email marketers also send several messages to an address from different customers that customers mostly avoid. In combination, spamming is a major concern for people as there is no way to regulate it unless the customer decides to unsubscribe the message. Even then, it is not guaranteed the same message would not appear in the customer’s mailbox from another email marketer. It has become a vicious cycle as people are stuck in a loop where they have the face continuous stream of messages from several online shopping sites, email marketers and social media sites. The worst part of spamming is that it does not have a target audience in mind, rather emails are sent in bulk as an unethical activity to reach every mailbox possible (Parrish, 2014).
Third Supporting Paragraph: Unconsented Mailers
Supporting Details:
Spamming by itself is not enough; people also have to view mails unconsented sources they have never heard from before. It becomes confusing for many people as they feel surprised and misused by companies they shared information with. Such misuse develops a lack of trust that can only be overcome by the development of regulation to protect customer interest.
This creates a dilemma in the mind of customers as they do not expect to receive mails from unknown sources. It is the most frustrating part of sharing your email address with online sites as many of them lack regulations and share personal details of their customers with anyone who is willing to pay. Therefore, regulating such behaviour has become an important aspect of ethical business practices. Customers should not be forced to receive mails from unknown sources and regulation needs to be brought in to save the day for many people. By regulating personal information, online websites would develop trust among customers and increase the possibilities of customer consenting to share personal details with any worries (Beesley, 2012).
Conclusion
Sharing email address has become a norm to join social media, online shopping and other websites. The problem associated with sharing information with online websites is the consequential spamming, unconsented mailers and data protection issues that are attached with it. In combination, these issues are the reason many people are troubled after registering their email address with online websites. The only solution to overcome these problems is by regulating emails and ensuring online websites are not allowed to share details with other websites and email marketers.
References
Beesley., C. (2012, 15 August). Do Your Email Marketing Activities Comply with the Law?. Retrieved 5 June 2016 from, https://www.sba.gov/blogs/do-your-email-marketing-activities-comply-law
Ferguson., C. (2010, 26 April). Is revealing my email address a breach of privacy?. Retrieved 5 June 2016 from, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/26/email-data-protection-breach
Parrish., J. (2014, 8 December). Text and Email Marketing Regulations: What You Should Know. Retrieved 5 June 2016 from, http://citygro.com/text-and-email-marketing-regulations-need-know/
