How To Not Get Scammed by E-Commerce Websites
I'm sure you have heard of Amazon practicing unfair price discrimination on buyers. Amazon's case is not the first case of price discrimination in all of Internet history. (Oh no.)
Imagine if Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had a fair value of $30. Is it morally reprehensible for e-commerce sites to charge some people more money because of their previous purchases or browsing history?
Feels unfair, doesn't it? And what's more, this seems shady.
Proponents of a free internet would say that it is reprehensible, as these sites are profiting from a non-transparent transaction.
Open Internet and Net Neutrality Explained
> Open internet: the concept that all Internet information should be accessible to all people equally. The open Internet is a derived concept from net neutrality.
> Net neutrality: the idea that people on the net should be treated equally and given equal access to data available online.
The overarching goal is to keep everyone informed and ensure that there is a level playing field so that everyone has an opportunity to defend their interests and seek opportunities.
Individuals can enter into transparent transactions with others and buy their Harry Potter books (or anything really) at a fair price.
This idea can be extended to organizations as well. The free Internet, in theory, would not discriminate and give you a fair price.
Think of all your savings if you don't unknowingly get into shady transactions!
Cool story, Now How Do We Get Our Fair Pricing?
The secret is to compare different e-commerce site's prices of the same object.
I hear your protests. Seriously, who likes researching the same kind of products when you've got other things to do?
Web Crawling can help to make information-searching more convenient. Instead of manually (and VERY tediously) scouring the Internet to find out where the cheapest product is, you could use a web crawler to procure this information efficiently.
And that's the tea!
Psst, Proxycurl can do it in real-time and at rapid speeds!
Here are some links about Proxycurl: