is this against the law

[TruthInSatire]

I have been tasked to automate a website that offers a "store" to individuals. they way they want the ordering to work is to click the purchase button and then fill out a form with the information they need to buy the product. address, phone number (maybe), what product, how many, stuff like that. when the customer submits the form it generates an email to the owner of the store with the order information gathered from the form. the catch is, it also sends a BCC to the site owner(the individual who runs the site where the stores are hosted) the bcc obviously is sent without the store owners knowledge or concent.

the reason they want a bcc was to make sure the advertising that the site owner was paying for is working or not.

I'm about to drop the project due to morality issues, and to CMA, but wanted some more input. I'm sure none of you are lawyers and don't know if it is legal or not, but what about your opinion? How many software developers does it take to change a light bulb?
None: it works in everyone else’s office, it must work in yours too.

 

[glenmac]

I don't know about the legality but ethically I think the site owner should tell his clients of his activities. What is he trying to hide?

 

[rkmarcks]

I am also not a lawyer, but I have had some interest in privacy issues over the years. Overall, I agree with glenmac's response. Consider this.

Lavasoft has created Ad-Aware to search for spyware that may have made it onto your computer, most of this spyware being used for marketing research. Of course, we now have firewalls, virus software, trojan software, et.al. to protect our privacy as well, albeit for differrent reasons.

What your boss is doing is akin to what MS and Real have done in the past in terms of 'snooping' around. Now he's going to argue it's not snooping. But the fact is, most people would be offended and quite suspicious if they were to find out what he was doing. On the other hand, if he would 'come clean' and actually ASK people for their help in doing this type of market research, he would get decent response.

I don't believe there is anything illegal about it, at least not yet. But there are many things that are 'legal' but lack in morality and/or ethics. This is one that definitely lacks in ethics.

Check out

http://grc.com/default.htm

for more info on this [general] topic. Gibson is heavily involved in trying to protect our 'internet privacy'. I think you'll know what to do.

RKM

 

[Murgle]

Whether this breaks any laws or not will depend on which country you are in. If this was operated in the UK, it would breach the Data Protection Act. Ahhhhh, I see you have a machine that goes Bing!