Security and Privacy in E-consumer Protection in Victoria, Australia

Governments in many countries have actively promoted both regulatory and self-regulatory approaches to govern e-commerce and to protect e-consumers. Nevertheless, the desired outcomes of e-consumer protection have not fully materialised. Although there are many research projects about ecommerce, security, privacy, trust, etc., few relate to e-consumer protection. In addition, most projects on e-consumer protection only focus on individual issues, rather than examining the entire coverage of the protection of e-consumers. This paper, a theoretical one, aims to fill these gaps by (i) identifying five issues in econsumer protection, (ii) discussing the current regulatory and non-regulatory framework of e-consumer protection, (iii) examining the effectiveness of this current framework, and (iv) proposing how this framework can be improved to address current and future problems. This paper will use Victoria, Australia as a case study and takes into account the view of all stakeholders.