The legal basket
The success and sustainability of electronic commerce, both business-tocustomer and business-to-business, depend on the establishment of extensive trust in both business privacy policies and the security measures they establish to protect clients’ confidential information from theft and misuse.48 With the expansion of social networking platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), concerns arise over the eventual misuse of personal data – not only by the owner or administrator of a social networking platform, but also by other individuals participating in it.49 In an information economy, information about customers, including their preferences and purchase profiles, becomes an important market commodity. For some companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, information about customers’ preferences constitutes a cornerstone of their business model. Basically the currency that users pay for (online) services rendered ‘for free’ is personal data, whether in a form of a browser cookie indicating their online behaviour or a specific information requested in filling in a webform or making a payment. And with the increased amount of information users reveal about themselves, the privacy violations become as frequent and more sophisticated.50 Privacy protection: states and businesses The third side of the privacy triangle is the least publicised, yet perhaps the most significant privacy issue. Both states and businesses collect considerable amounts of data about individuals. Some of this data is exchanged with other states and businesses to impede terrorist activities. However, in some situations, such as those to which the European Directive on Data Protection 107