Yesterday I tried to shop online for software. On a ‘whim’ I searched the vendor’s name and BBB. I soon discovered how hard it is to find a vendor with a ‘clean’ reputation. Price was certainly not a useful screen. The best I found was that vendor would accept back an unusable/unregisterable product for resale to the next gullible mark.
I had hoped that the shopping interfaces of the web would attempt internal policing. My experience suggests that there might be a market for a BBB warning application, one that would interrupt an attempt to examine an unethical seller’s wares with a “buyer beware” this seller has a tarnished reputation.
The legal implications are clear, but the same might be said of sites now warned against by antivirus software.
The web shouldn’t end up as a vast flea market populated by fences selling stolen goods.
baumgrenze
