Business Ethics in E-Commerce – Legal Challenges and Opportunities

Background: This paper deals with the ethical limitations of e-commerce. The aim is to discover areas where the protection is not granted as users would expect and to make proposals for improvement. The authors will begin the paper by proposing the market of e-commerce and how it is directly linked to society’s daily life. The method adopted for the legal perspective is case studies, where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) legal context will be explored. In the end, the paper will answer two main questions: What are the ethical challenges facing the issue of data protection in electronic commerce? What are essential legal frameworks that regulate the subject of data protection in Saudi Arabia? Methods: The normative method is applied to identify the main legislations used in e-commerce and data protection, especially regarding big data regulations. A case study analysis is also used where KSA legislation is investigated. Results and Conclusions: The authors saw that e-commerce is an insecure place to protect customer data. This data is stored electronically, so it is very easy to steal it in addition to the use of this data by companies without the permission of the customer. Research proves that laws are unable to keep pace with technological developments and are unable to provide effective protection for data stored in the cloud.