Ethics In The Virtual World

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract: Ethics in information management context human behaviour or more specifically with the behaviours of individuals in society. Ethics can also be defined as morally right or wrong, and fair or not done by the individual. Virtual world community stands for computer-based online where users can interact with each other and use the computer as a medium to communicate with everyone without having face to face. The methodology that have been used are observation and articles. Seminar also is a method that used in completed this paper. A virtual world is an interactive simulated environment accessed by multiple users through an online interface. Virtual worlds are also called digital worlds. What is the ethics should be used in virtual library? Are they is important in virtual world? All the questions have provided in this paper. As users, we must know the ethics should have in ourselves.

Keyword: Ethics, Virtual World, behaviours, computer-based online, online interface.

Introduction

In today’s information and technology environment, ethics involves to human behaviour or more specifically with the behaviours of individuals in society. Ethics can also be defined as morally right or wrong, and fair or not done by the individual. Ethics will reflect each individual's behaviour in the face of life. Virtual world community stands for computer-based online where users can interact with each other and use the computer as a medium to communicate with everyone without having face to face. They can use this medium to share information. Virtual world as a platform used for education, businesses, political, economic and social. Especially in education, virtual worlds also offer a new experience to students other than using the traditional method. Ethics in a virtual world is the issue of whether committed by individuals using this medium is right or wrong. For example the virtual world are Facebook, twitter, Skype and so on. Nowadays, most of people prefer to use the virtual world as a medium to share the information. In businesses, most of people use the virtual world to promote their products. As we know, virtual world has become a trend to people to promote the products. But, we must also be aware with the business in virtual world because there have many issues that have been found in our country. For instance, the virtual world has caused a lot of the crime to the public. The ethics that occurred in the virtual world are cheating in business. As we know, people promote their product in social networking. But there have individual who are cheating in business in virtual world. It can give impact to the users when they are a victim in virtual world. The other ethics is irresponsible. That means many people misuse of virtual world that give them easier to communicate with others. Besides that, defamation also a bad ethics in the virtual world. It can be affected to the individual. Furthermore, virtual world also cannot use to harm other people. Safety is a major concern with the use of the internet. A recent survey by Cox Communications in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that teens remain unconcerned about the risks of sharing personal information on the Internet. Social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and Xanga allow users to create a profile with personal information and photos. The other ethics in virtual world is do not use the virtual world to steal the information. It means, the individual do not steal the other information to sell to other company for the own purpose. When we are in virtual world, we must take care our ethics such as do not tell secrets to the someone we did not know. Besides that, the good ethics in virtual world is be respectful. The users must respect what the other people said in virtual world. Although we do know who are that individual, we must be respect for other people.

Methodology

In completing this term paper, the first method are used to enable in depth understanding of ethics in the virtual is from the articles. The articles provided a lot of information that related ethics in the virtual world. Besides that, the second method is from seminar. In the seminar, the information distributed through the talk by the CyberSecurity Malaysia. The content of the seminar is related about the ethics in the virtual world. Furthermore, the method that has been used to complete this term paper is from the observation. Observation is a simple method that has been used to get the information. Observation can be done with the experienced or what goes around in life. The information can get more faster by the observation because it is what happen in life.

Definitions and concepts of Ethics

There are various definitions of ethics. It can be defined as the individual behaviour whether it is true or wrong. According to Stephen M.Mutula (2010), ethics is the different of right actions from wrong actions is that actions have better consequences. Ethics is concerned with the universal or commonly held values of persons, despites different moral or cultural values. Ethics also focused on the norms of behaviors or group with a society based the normative conduct and moral judgement and principles of right and wrong.

A virtual world is an interactive simulated environment accessed by multiple users through an online interface. Virtual world also as known as digital world. There have six features of virtual world which is shared space. It means the world allows many users to participate at once. The second feature is graphical user interface. For example, the world depicts space visually, ranging in style from 2D "cartoon" imagery to more immersive 3D environments. The third feature is immediacy that interaction takes place in real time. The fourth feature is interactivity. It means the world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customized content. The fifth feature is persistence that means the world's existence continues regardless of whether individual users are logged in. The last feature is socialization or community. It means the world allows and encourages the formation of in-world social groups like teams, guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighbourhoods and so on. A technology such as virtual world is a medium which is used by researchers in recent years. Many active internet users using a virtual world for social interaction with others. But the impact of using virtual world is important for users.

According to creative common, there are a few ways in which virtual worlds are currently used such as commercial gaming. Commercial gaming worlds tend to focus on a singular fictional theme and consistently follow formal conventions such as character-focused avatars, progression through an interactive narrative storyline, and a series of competitive events. The second way is socializing or online community buildings. There are many commercial community-focused virtual worlds that emphasize socializing than gaming. So, it provide a more open-ended experience and strongly influenced by the culture of text-based chat rooms. In education, some virtual world have been prepared to the educational purposes because educational worlds are sponsored by academic institutions or non-profit organization, although some educational worlds sponsored by corporations. Next, the political expression means virtual world will provide a forum and debate. While the traditional world political issue can crop up in gaming, social and educational world.

According to the Alfreda Dudley, James Bramen, Yuanqiong Wang, Giovanni Vincenti and Dinna Tupper, this article have given example about Avatar and experienced phenomenological interest in a synthetic environment is to be real by many users. This article also mentions a second life that has provided a means of communication through text and voice chat. Many consumers who spend a lot of time creating an online business to try in real life income. when connecting the real world to the virtual world, there will be concerns such as identity protection, virtual theft, addiction and stalking issues online.

According John Strain (2007), this special issue is devoted to Ethics in the Virtual World. This was the theme selected for the Second International Conference on Teaching Applied and Professional Ethics in Higher Education held at what is now Roehampton University in September 2005. The conference invited papers on ethical issues that arose in computing practice which would need to be addressed in teaching computing ethics. Three papers delivered at the conference have been revised and developed for this issue. They have been chosen because they reflect three major and continuing themes in computing, ethics and society. The first of these is the explosion in the number of opportunities for accessing confidential and sensitive data that are afforded by the digital mediation of data, particularly in the health sector. Making information available to those who can make effective and appropriate use of it also creates abundant opportunities for the abuse of data. Part of the crisis faced by health services in many nations is the inability to manage this delicate balance between protecting data and making it accessible. Richard Cooper explores the ethical issues that arise in extending opportunities to access health records to allied health care professionals such as community pharmacists.

Ethics Conceptual Theory

Do not tell the secrets to someone we did know

Defamation other people

Be respectful

Cannot use the internet to steal identity information

Ethics in the virtual world

Irresponsible

Cheating in business

Figure 1: Diagram of ethics in the virtual world

Threat in Encouraging Ethical Behaviors Among Information / Information Technology Personnel.

There are several common threats in developing ethical society identified such as privacy and confidential, authentication and identity theft, vandalism, harassment and stalking, defamation and disparagement and frauds and scams.

Privacy and confidential

Breach of information data integrity due to unauthorized monitoring and recording avatar conversations and activities, which can lead to personal exposure information and behaviour data. Much like social networking applications Facebook and MySpace, virtual worlds enable users to create contact lists and enable contacts to view their personal information, for examples, association with groups, online activities. Of particular concern is unauthorized monitoring of avatar activities and conversation, which may lead to exposure of personal information and data.

Authentication and identity theft

Verification of avatar identity which may be faked or reverse-engineered due to weak mechanisms for authentication and trust building. Authentication and identify theft issues in the virtual world also can be exploit social networking in the virtual world.

Vandalism, harassment and stalking

Harassment and cyber-bulling that set up a blockade of freedom in the virtual world users. It includes damaging the virtual property. For example, online harassment and cyber-bulling in the virtual world may give the effect to the users. So that means it can be the users untrustworthy in the virtual world.

Defamation and disparagement

Defamation and disparagement means deception, spreading of false and misleading information that may lead to damages to reputation and character. Defamation is a bad behaviour because it can be problem to the who is defamation. Nowadays, defamation become a trend in the virtual world. Many people like to defamation other people without think the effect will be occurred. It will be the virtual world as a bad medium to users.

Frauds and scams

Nowadays, social networking is a trend to individual in interact with others in the virtual world. Most of people like use the virtual world in daily life. This is because virtual world can make our life be easier. But, without we realized the virtual world occurred many frauds. The ability to replicate real life business models has made it possible for perpetrators to target gullible users in virtual worlds.

Recommendations to Address the threat in Encouraging Ethical Behaviors Among Information / Information Technology Personnel

In response to these challenges, several recommendations are proposed as follows:

Avoid from view the profile in the social networking

View personal information in the social networking can give the hacker to hack your information. If you avoid from view the profile in the social networking, this problem can be solved. Social networking actually as a main source to the individual to steal the information and hack your personal information.

Report to the Consumer FraudReporting.org

If you victims in fraud and scams, you can report your problem to the Consumer FraudReporting.org. This is a example of organization that accept report from the victims to solved this problem. Consumer Fraud Reporting is an free online service to warn consumers about specific types of financial and other scams via the internet and provide a means to report scams and fraud.

In addition to thousands of actual examples of scam letters, emails, faxes and transcripts of phone conversations to help you identify a scam, we have many pages of concise lists of contact information, links, phone numbers and guidance to help you report the scam to the proper authorities, and to try to recover your loss.

Report to the police

If occurred vandalism, harassement and stalking in the virtual world, you can report to the police what happen to you. For examples, if occurred to yourself, you can print the evidence to give to the police. It can be your evidence. The police will take actions to the crime. When you have evidence, the case will be easier to solve.

Keeping sensitive consumer data out of the hands of identity thieves through better data security and more accessible education.

It means the company must develop the better security to avoid from information theft. That company should be established to require private sector entities to safeguard the personal data they compile and maintain and to provide notice to consumers when a breach occurs that poses a significant risk of identity theft. It can avoid the information will be theft. The consumer information will be safer.

Educate federal agencies on how to protect their data and monitor compliance with existing guidance.

If the company know to protect their information, so the information will be safe. So, the company have a guidance to maintain the information from the theft. It can make it more difficult for identity thieves who obtain consumer data to use it to steal identities.

Conclusion

Ethics in the virtual world is very important to users. This is because we must have ethics in using the internet. Virtual world as a medium for users to interact with others with easily. The users do not need to face to face to share the information. All the information can share through the virtual world. As virtual worlds become more pervasive in our social structures, these topics and issues will continue to have a significant impact on the applications, individuals, and organizations involved. Human nature has not changed because do not having the basic ethical principles. However, technology has helped us in allowing us to work more productively. As we know, the virtual world is a technology medium to help users do the tasks with easily.