Rakuten Group, Inc. — Ethics Grade B-

Rakuten Group, Inc. receives an overall ethics grade of B- (65/100) on CancelCo's corporate accountability database. Sector: Technology. Market cap: Large Cap.

Category scores

• labor: 68
• privacy: 50
• consumer: 72
• environment: 60
• humanRights: 75

Documented incidents (3)

• Free Shipping Policy Abuse (medium, 2021) — Japan's Fair Trade Commission investigated Rakuten for forcing merchants to bear the cost of free shipping, which was deemed an abuse of dominant bargaining power.
• Customer Data Leak (medium, 2022) — Nearly 1.5 million pieces of data from customers and business partners were exposed due to security misconfigurations in its storage cloud services.
• Sale of Whale and Dolphin Meat (medium, 2014) — Environmental groups criticized the platform for allowing thousands of whale and dolphin products to be sold, including meat from endangered species.

Documented good deeds

• Mobile Market Disruption — Launched low-cost mobile plans that forced major Japanese carriers to lower prices for millions of consumers.

Ethical alternatives

• eBay — Better privacy management and stronger policies against the sale of endangered animal products.