Question

Find two examples where someone was injured because of a public disclosure of private facts about them. What do your examples have in common? What important lessons can the e-business community learn from these events?

Answer 1

Public disclosure of private facts :-

Public disclosure of private facts comes under the purview of Restatement of torts which prohibits publishing of a matter that would be offensive to a reasonable person or a community and it's publicizing does not justify public interest .

Elements of claim :-

1) The disclosed fact was a private fact .

2) There was a public disclosure of the private fact .

3) The public disclosure is offensive to a reasonable person or ordinary sensibilities.

Defences against the claim :-

1) Consent of the plaintiff .

2) Matter already present in public record .

3) The information is of legitimate public concern .

4) Event took place in public.

Relevant Cases :-

1) A homosexual man in a highly conservative town might choose not to reveal his sexual orientation in public. If someone discloses this fact in public ,it may cause of irreparable harm to his reputation.

2) Disclosure of the name of a rape victim without her consent will violate her privacy and might cause her mental torture .

Safety measures to be adopted by E - Commerce companies :-

​​​​​​It is a very common practice to sign up on an E - Commerce website before ordering products .

These websites have a large pool of personal information of their customers .

Information like credit card details , bank account details , personal contact number , gender or address if published publicly might cause serious harm to the customers.

Thus the E- Commerce companies must take proper safety measures to keep this information safe to protect themselves from any claims .