Describe four ethical issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.
As personal information becomes more and more prominent online, there grows a concerning in the ethical issues surrounding that stored data. The main issue is that storing personal data on the cyberspace is inevitable. As society leans more towards cyberspace, and technology continues to expand, personal information is stored as soon as one is born. Four ethical issues concerning this are as follows:
- Privacy and Confidentiality: By storing information in the cyberspace, people are ultimately losing a sense of privacy and confidentiality in their life. Their information is being stored somewhere that can be deemed vulnerable. Anyone with enough knowledge and will can access their information and use it to their own advantage. The scary part is, this typically happens without anyone knowing. It can take months before someone realize their information is stolen.
- Not Identifying Security Breaches: This is something that a lot of companies tend to do, and that’s inaccurately reporting security and data breaches. These breaches result in information being compromised. If individuals who have been compromised are unaware of these breaches, they are unable to accurately protect themselves against these data breaches.
- Inappropriate Use of Data: This generally refers to using data inappropriately, or for the wrong use. A few examples of this are large companies such as Facebook selling off personal information such as emails, passwords, addresses, and names to other companies. This could refer to any corporation that stores and maintains any information that can be compromised, including bank information, birth dates, vehicle types, and more.
- Data Inaccuracies: Storing personal information about individuals also leads to the fear of inaccurately storing, or purposely inaccurately storing, information. A great example of this is doctors and hospitals changing information to inaccurately represent a patients information, which could be life changing or threatening.
While storing information on the cyber space as a whole isn’t a terrible thing, it can come with its own disturbing and concerning features. Thankfully, the cyberspace is a generally safe area where information is unlikely to be taken.