The Issue Of Ethics Online

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The issue of ethics online has brought about the debate of cyber ethics, and how we as humans have evolved. Ethics are individual characteristics, but also are a reflection of communal expectations of moral values, and ideologies. Cyber ethics is an extension of ethics; it is the study of how people in society interact with computer networks and the internet. It relays societal expectations on the web and how the lack or inadvertent loss of privacy has now pledged our generation, with vast amount of our private information ready available and accessible to anyone through the click of a mouse is amazing. The predominate ease at which people and companies can collect internet users private information is of grave concern.

The issue of information privacy and the internet needs to be analysed, and the lack of internet regulations or laws that are standard worldwide is of major concern. The meaning of privacy can be broken down to the restriction of other people accessing your own details. Privacy can be described as a dynamic and ever evolving process due to the constant societal changes. Fears for information privacy are especially significant in the online environment where the absence of physical human interactions is lacking, behavioural objectives of organisations gathering personal data are not always clear, and in certain instances, private information is collected without the express consent of the end user. With knowledge in mind, it is of paramount importance that privacy protection should be globally consistent.

Globalisation encompassed with the busy lifestyles of people has led to the exponential growth of social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter to mention a few. These websites permit users to create a individualized personal profile which is then used to connect with peers. The power of social networking and the influence on the general society has never been more evident, they are considered the leading edge of online interpersonal communications and interactions. And with that being said the amount of personal information has increased significantly, through self-disclosure as people share their personal information with others. People willingly provide private and personal information about themselves in the initial registration phase of these social networking websites. Society entrust these businesses to protect the privacy of users through their ethical business practices but this is not always the case.

Sensitive information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email and banking details are freely collected. This leaves people vulnerable and there is a major loss of privacy. With the addition and improvements of online based storage such as drop box, iCloud to mention just a few, database technology has vastly improved and with it concerns about how safe ones private information is. User’s personal data can be easily combined with transaction records of a user with every click of a mouse online. With easily accessible data mining tools, internet privacy concerns are on the rise as companies create data warehouses to gather and store massive amounts of private user data. With the ready availability of personal data online, people are easy targets for fraudsters.

With a simple mouse click a cracker can easily access one’s information using public records via search engines and databases. Cookies are used to track users on certain websites, but people view them as an inversion to their privacy. They collect user information such as their spending patterns, email addresses, or just tracking the sections of a website that a user visited. This information is collected and analysed by companies and can be used to create profiles of individual users or it could be complied into a mailing list for either selling to other companies or for their own business use. This has led an ethical debate as to where end-user data ends up and how users are not consulted as to whether they consent to selling of their own private data.

With the evolving and ever-growing modes of communication, technology now plays a major role in connecting us. To some people, Internet privacy concerns are not a major concern, whilst other view people as being too over sensitive as they envision the major growth that has occurred in recent history. Comparison are still made about in-store shopping and online shopping, with both raising the exact same privacy issues. With in-store shopping, customers still run the same risk of having their credit card details stolen and this is also the same as online shoppers. The use of cookies to track a person online or on a particular website is the same as in-store spy cameras.

Even though cookies can be used to identify users to a web site, the fact is they are unable to identify any personal information of the user, unless the user provides this information willingly. In addition to that Internet privacy concerns are trivial. Users do not normally desire to reveal their private information for marketing purposes but the same information can be easily accessed by companies through the use of sources such as telephone directories, in-store shopping cards like flybys and numerous other sources. The obtained information could be used by the company to analyse the demography of their customer’s in order to improve their service or for marketing promotions. Companies send advertising material, promotional materials to customer’s mailboxes, based on information that they gathered in-store. So it could be argued that getting rid of spam or junk mail is much simpler and quicker than getting rid of actual physical mail. Thus, the argument of spam emails is considered petty.

Even though the previous paragraphs offered numerous points of views that implied that online information privacy is not of grave concern, online users still prefer some level of assurance from the website that they are using in regard to the private information that each individual user provides. A vital way to address this aspect is by meeting and managing user’s expectations where privacy is concerned. Website’s could include a privacy statement that informs users that their right to privacy will be respected by the company and that all data and information collected will only be used by the company itself. This would help ease user’s with concern about privacy.

But if companies don’t address this, users are becoming ever more aware of their digital foot print in cyberspace and the need to protect this information. This is one of the major reasons why a huge number of non-internet user avoid the use of internet is due to concerns about the privacy and safety of their personal information (). Customers avoid online shopping and still prefer to deal with people on a one on one basis the acquiring goods from the web. With that, identity theft has become more prevalent with the growth of social networks; online shopping sites such as eBay and many more other websites they are seen as the main catalyst of cybercrime. With this outlook in mind, companies such as JP Morgan Chase have already started taking advantage of the situation by providing identity theft cover or protection insurance.

With the vast amount of information and images available on the internet, a debates over online information privacy, societies motivation for censorship generates from well-intentioned needs to safeguard children from online predators, and from viewing inappropriate content on the web to governments controlling the content that people view in a bid to control a people’ s access to information. In countries like china cyber censorship is rife as the government attempts to control people’s access to information. Freedom of speech is virtually non-existent and no matter what the intentions are the end result is the same; people’s access to the web is blocked. Online censorship is not only designed for governments and parents, there is a growing number of people and organisations who desire to protect themselves from malicious online content, therefore the has been an increase in the desire for web site filters.

With the emergence of the Internet, there has been a wide array of issues that society needed to address which has shown the spot light on politicians, lawmakers, rights holders, content creators, businesses, content users and others to reinvent themselves in order to tackle some of these problems. Privacy advocates argued that proper law enforcement is needed to regulate and stop unethical online data collection of user’s private information without proper authorisation or consent. Some people are of the view that laws will not solve the problem, but instead encourage more of user of the internet to self-regulate themselves, as the internet is without borders and it would be virtually impossible to legislate a universal law. They are of the view point that people have morals and that appealing to their moral nature would have a far better effect. A general code of ethics for internet users would virtually make clear some aspects that a lot of internet users are not clear on, for example the issues of peer to peer file sharing network, some countries are of the view that it is not illegal and that it does not infringe on anyone’s rights to share data.

One of the major issues has been the issue of intellectual property in a modern inter-connected society. The array of new technologies and the rapid modernization of society have raised the issues of intellectual property. Together with the development of compression technology, Pandora’s Box has been truly opened. Peer to peer file sharing sites have cropped up all over the internet with torrents site being over more popular. Intellectual property rights have taken centre stage for the last decade, with international debates in many different forums as to how traditional intellectual property right could be merged with the internet.

Two possible solutions have arose as to how to address this problem. The first approach is to involve online intermediaries in the enforcement of intellectual property laws and the second approach is the use of internet technical processes to stop the access to illegal material. The consequences of this debate may have grave implications for the future of Internet and Internet usage that is largely unmonitored. Supporters of free file sharing networks argue that file sharing has given people bigger platform and quicker access to mass media, and has improved the exposure of new talented artists like Justin Bieber, Soulja Boy, Psy just to mention a few. Supporters of restrictions on file sharing networks argue that file sharing destroys the revenues of media companies and artists. This has forced companies and governments to look more closely at cyber security and how they could protect themselves.

Cyber security has been one of the most hotly debated topics in recent history. It is the frame of technologies, processes and practices aimed at safeguarding networks, computers, programs and data from unauthorized access, attacks, or damage. Ensuring cyber security involves an organised effort within an organisations information system. Components of cyber security include: network security, application security and most importantly end user education. Cyber security has one major problem, the quickly and relentlessly evolving nature of cyber threats. The traditional approach has been to focus on how to protect the vital component of a system network form online threats but this approach has proved to be inadequate in the current environment. Cybercrimes have been on the rise and legislators have their work cut out for the in the coming years.

In conclusion, while studies show online information privacy has been investigated over the last 10 years, there are still numerous aspects that need to be considered. This research provides a platform to address such issues in-depth. Privacy is a moral and ethical right of users to be anonymous when it comes to the issue of personal information privacy. The ethical point of view when it comes to information privacy and security in information technology has helped experts and users in general to recognise and resolve moral problems that users face on day to day bases. In this research paper we have looked at both aspect of information technology, online privacy and the various ethical issues that users have and how to bridge the gap. Cyber security itself it not considered a moral issue, but more of a societal issue. It has been argued that maintaining cyber security may be morally necessary to protect user’s rights and interests from cyber criminals.