Discuss about the Ethical Issues Confronting IT Managers.
Ethical concern is becoming the most relevant and important aspect related to the information and technology. Ethics is nothing but the right choice of action according to any issue or situation. In this report, the one of the ethical issues of confronting IT managers are being discussed to understand the impact of violating measures of privacy. In addition to this, the ethical issues chosen for discussing above mentioned aspect is availability of information is leading to the misuse of those information.
This report is covering the following aspects: viewpoint of the stakeholders about the ethical issues, importance of ethical concerns rather than the legal action in considering the resolution process of ethical issues, ethical obligation of stakeholders and guidance of the Australian Code of Ethics to the story. Chosen story for describing ethical issues confronting IT Managers is: “Facebook’s WhatsApp Privacy Changes Raise EU, U.S. Concerns” (Bloomberg.com 2016).
There are mainly three stakeholders in the concerned story related to misuse of availability of information. These stakeholders are Users of Facebook and WhatsApp, FTP and the companies itself (Bloomberg.com 2016). Different ethical viewpoint of these stakeholders are explained below.
The story published on 29th August of 2016 it was clear that the above mentioned famous organization of social networking are misusing the private data for their own benefits. The organizations are using these data for making revenues through collaborating with their advertising and other social networking partners such as banks, Instagram and Facebook etc (Weiss 2014). From the ethical point of view, this decision is not correct as these organizations are using the private data without the permission of the users. FTP charged Facebook and WhatsApp for their violation of commitment with them.
Users are main object in the concerned case. All the specifications are evolving around the needs of the user. In contrast with the ethical viewpoint of this case, users are completely suffered due to the unethical decisions of the social networking organizations. Facebook and WhatsApp shares all the private and confidential data of users to their business partners (Bloomberg.com 2016). This aspect helps these business partners to send messages and detailed information to the users such as offers, new schemes and other details that their organization want to provide. According to the U.S. federal Trade Commission, Facebook and WhatsApp has violated the “federal law of banning unfair and deceptive practices” (Bloomberg.com 2016). This detail has guided the user of these social networking sites that they should change their personal data regularly in order to have secured way of transactions and also secured way of searching within the internet.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has recognized two complaints from the end of users of Facebook and WhatsApp. These complaints are the user data is being misused by the business partners as well as social networking sites itself. Private data such as phone numbers, date of birth of the user, address and other than these personal data are being transferred to the business partners of Facebook and WhatsApp for making their brand popular and increase the revenues (Bloomberg.com 2016). According to the ethical concerned viewpoint of FTP, they are blaming these social networking sites to violate the prohibition acts against these deceptive practices. European Union Regulators have said that the users of these social networking sites should change their personal data for their own safety (Zydziunaite and Suominen 2014). Therefore, from the ethical point of view in this case, FTP plays a positive role in providing and they are ethically correct.
Ethical evaluation is very important while considering the resolution process of unethical act. Ethics is one of most important aspects that should be concerned while measuring the effectiveness of the issue, situation or incident. Ethics helps to define the outcomes of any case or situation with respect to right or wrong measures (Bloomberg.com 2016). According to the case analyzed in this report, the case can be resolved by forcefully applying any acts or law but it will not directly affect the wrong concern of the targeted stakeholders (Chen and Zhao 2012). Ethical evaluation of the case not only helps to identify the depth and impact of the case on other stakeholders as well as on population but also helps to set a new making level of the ethical concern.
The social networking sites and FTP can easily analyze the problems of the users and accordingly the social networking media has changed their policies that had made the personal data protected from any kind of attack or hacking measures. According to the ethical measures, Facebook and WhatsApp are obliged to ask the users for transferring their data to the other business organizations (Bloomberg.com 2016). Form the ethical point of view FTP states that these social networking media has violated the law of restricting deceptive practices. Sale to Facebook it was the first step by it towards the unethical measures. They changed all the setting of the WhatsApp that helps them to earn more money from the competitive market (Bloomberg.com 2016). Following are the justified measures for choosing the ethical aspects to resolve any issues rather than legal actions:
Honesty: Honesty is a crucial matter of concern that specifies the appropriateness of the actions. Ethical resolution process in this case does not create any forceful impact on the social networking media and government (Martin et al. 2016). It resolved the problems smoothly.
Objectivity: Ethical measures always keep the objectives highlighted. In this case, the main objective is to protect the user data and their privacy rights (Jung et al. 2013). With the help of legal actions objectives may be highlighted but the resolution process of the issue may become harmful to some extent.
Integrity: Any legal action cannot provide justice to all the stakeholders of any case but ethical measures provide same importance to all the stakeholders of the concerned case.
Carefulness: Ethical evaluation may be some times rough and straightforward action to the targeted stakeholders but it always provide careful attention to each stakeholders involved within the case.
Respect for intellectual property: Ethical concern not only provides attention to the users of Facebook and WhatsApp but also take care of the social networking media while considering the importance of social media (Bloomberg.com 2016).
Confidentiality: Confidentiality is always maintained in case of the ethical measurement, as the confidentiality is one of the most important pillars of judgment.
Social responsibilities: Ethical evaluation is done with respect to the legal rights and moral aspects of human that is in turns connected with the social responsibility (Adelola et al. 2015).
Legality: On the other hand, the ethical measure always follows the legal aspects of the rules and regulations.
Human Subject Protection: Moral values are always concerned while performing any ethical evaluation of any issue.
Facebook and WhatsApp are leading social media platforms. Though these have affected upon the modern era, still it has some obligations that has to be followed by these giants. These are mentioned as follows:
Fair dealings: In contrast with the case analyzed in this report, it is found that WhatsApp and Facebook have not maintained fair dealings (Eckhoff and Sommer 2014). They had used their customer data to earn more revenues. This aspect leads to the unfair dealings. Therefore this obligation should have to be followed by the organization.
Positive attitude towards regulating acts: Facebook and WhatsApp has violated the law of banning deceptive practices according to FTP (Bloomberg.com 2016). Therefore, the positive attitudes of these Social networking sites are not shown.
Social responsibility: In contrast with the social responsibility the social networking, sites have no maintained their responsibility towards the society.
Several obligatory measures should be provided by FTP to the citizens of U.S. these measures are stated as follows:
Consumer protection: FTP has obliged to the users of Social networking sites and it should protect the rights of customer privacy (Bloomberg.com 2016). In contrast with the case being discussed in this report, the leading social networking giants are forced change their new policies.
Violation of Public policies: FTP has reviewed that the leading social networking giant violates the “Law of banning deceptive practices” (Slade and Prinsloo 2013). Therefore, they had taken right steps to provide justified measures to this aspect.
Unethical conduct: It is the duty of the FTP to ensure that all the measures conducted by any organizations are going in an ethical way. In contrast with this rule, this aspect is maintained here.
There are two ethical obligations that have to be followed by the consumers or user related to the social networking (Smith et al. 2013). The user has to pay the appropriate amount of money to the organization in order to get the disrupted service form the end of authority. In case of the FTP, the users of social networking media have to follow the rules and regulations of this concerned authority to maintain ethical evaluation perfect and justified (Hong and Thong 2013). In contrast with the case, here the users of social networking media follow both of these obligations.
There are six code of conduct in according to the ACS code of ethics. According to the context of the case is being analyzed in the report two guidance can be provided to the stakeholders of the case. These codes are “primacy of the public interest and honesty”. Honesty is mentioned inn order to highlight the unethical steps taken by the leading social networking giant (Buchanan 2012). They should maintain honesty in order deal ethically with their consumers. “primacy of the public interest and honesty” are applicable to the FTP for improving their justice towards the consumers as well as users of some policies (Hardy 2015). The social networking giants and FTP can follow these codes in order to serve the consumers in a better way.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that in most of the cases of information-technology, ethical concern is being highlighted as technological advancements are introducing new threats to the information system. In contrast with the real life case related to “ethical issues confronting IT Managers”, it can be evaluated that the ethical concern and justification of the measures are very important. This report has provided an overview of the stakeholders involved within the story as well as the resolution process of the ethical issues. In addition to this, ethical obligations of each stakeholder are elaborated in a detailed manner. This elaboration highlighted the need of guidance from the ACS Code of Conduct. Two guidance are provided to evaluate the role of each stakeholders in contrast with the ethical evaluation.
References
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Bloomberg.com. 2016. Facebook’s WhatsApp Privacy Changes Raise EU, U.S. Concerns. [online] Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-29/whatsapp-privacy-changes-raise-eu-concern-over-user-data-control [Accessed 21 Sep. 2016].
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