Legal Issues That the UPS

¶ … legal issues that the UPS website must address, the most important seems to be the issues related to privacy policies and the protection of personal and company information. Indeed, we should assume that posting a delivery request on the UPS website will imply that the consumer-to-be will need to complete information such as personal address etc. The UPS Privacy Policy clarifies all issues related to the protection of customer information, the security and integrity of these types of information, the retention of customer information etc., all in accordance with national legislation.

Another important aspect that needs to be considered in terms of legal issues, also covered in the privacy policy, is related to information collected on the websites, in terms of IP addresses, for example, and cookies that are installed when a potential future customer visits the UPS website. The privacy policy on the UPS website clearly stipulates and clarifies all issues related to such considerations so that the company is legally covered in case of a judicial issue.

UPS is also very clear on its website on the terms and conditions of the carriage, "restrictions and conditions which limit and govern the extent of the service UPS offer." These restrictions and conditions represent the legal framework under which the company operates and under which it understands to deliver the package received.

The regulatory issues should basically cover information ranging from rates and delivery times to how the package is prepared and shipped. As such type of issues refer to the strict coordinates that UPS is vowing to respect when handling packages for its customers, we can include these types of issues in the regulatory category. Additionally, these are terms under which UPS is willing to take over a package and ship/deliver it.

In my opinion, in terms of ethical issues, we need to refer first of all to how UPS is willing to respect the regulatory and legal issues. In many ways, some of these issues may not necessarily be illegal, but could certainly be unethical. A good example in this sense could be provided by the collection of past and present customers' email addresses. In many countries, email spam is illegal, but this can be hidden under a legal umbrella by placing an unsubscribe button on the first email, giving the receiver the opportunity to use his option not to receive mails in the future. On the other hand, this does not hide the fact that the sender could have used a database of private emails in a personal interest, as could be UPS's case when promoting a new service etc. Without necessarily being illegal, it is certainly unethical to use in this manner the personal information.