Scott felt that the company had done nothing wrong but was a victim of a pervasive paranoia about privacy. HomeConnection was not using the bugs for any untoward purposes-its purpose was to track the results of the advertising promotion, that is, how many people were clicking on these ads. Also, Scott himself had modified the company’s privacy policy to indicate that web bugs might be used sometimes. (However, there was no indication that web bugs would be placed on the persona Web pages of its user base.) As several of his managers made their way into the conference room
adjoining his office, Scott made one last check with customer service. By now it was late in the day and the volume of calls and e-mails was dying down. It was now up to Scott to determine a response- did the company face a serious problem or was this just a tempest in a teapot?