Privacy Ethics Overview

The following sample essay on “Privacy”. Ethics can be defined as a set of principles that governs the conduct of groups, organizations and individuals. However, information system ethics can be defined as a code of conduct used to protect consumers and society. As technology advances year after year the technological issues that come with the advance of technology also grows. Each year we hear about some form of technological mishap that has taken place and that a rather widely trusted enterprise was the culprit who had the issue and decided that they should cover it up instead of doing the ethically correct thing and notifying the public/their consumers so that they could protect themselves.

Almost every time an instance such as this has occurred the consumers of these services had to be notified of the issue by some form of external media reporting outlet before the company themselves could comment or make an announcement about what has happened.

Privacy is defined as the right to keep one’s personal life matters and documents out of the public eye and away from scrutiny.

The invasion of privacy is when someone’s personal life matters and confidential documents are maliciously looked into and have been placed into the wrong hands. Technological issues that surround privacy and the invasion of privacy can be a wide range and selection of things and they affect people in either a rather negative light. Issues which surround technology have been proven to be rather severe and can be things like identity theft, financial crimes, cyber-crimes, fraud, and abuse of power.

Get quality help now

Marrie pro writer

Verified

Proficient in: Crime

5 (204)

“ She followed all my directions. It was really easy to contact her and respond very fast as well. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Consequences of mishandled private information can vary in multiple ways. Someone who has mishandled private information has opened a gate way for scammers and hackers to steal the finances of some on. They have also allowed them to assume the identity of someone else which means that any bad debt or any crime committed the person who had their identity stolen would be punished for it. If a big cooperation is in this type of situation confidential information may be published or sold to their competition. The information may even be used to blackmail the company into paying out large sums of money to the person with the information and in worse case scenarios a person seeking revenge on the Cooperation, Company or organization may decide to erase valuable data that is needed for the company to function or try to get rid of them all together.

Over the past years there have been multiple scenarios and events that have shown us that if information systems did not exist we would not have these issues. One such event is that on the 6th of October 2017 BBC news online reported that a month prior one hundred and forty five million American citizens had found out that they had fallen victim to one of the biggest data breeches because they were using the credit rating company called Equifax. Sensitive and important information such as social security numbers, birthdays, phone numbers, credit card information and even driver licenses information was leaked when this breach of data took place leaving already vulnerable people even more vulnerable. These people knowingly made themselves vulnerable so that they would be able to easily monitor their credit and protect themselves against fraud and identity theft especially because they were under the pretense and company guarantee that their information would be private. When this turned out to not be the case however, millions of people lost trust in the company because the company failed to prevent the breach of their cumulated data on their clientele and instead helped malicious cyber criminals gain even more data on people who could prove to be potential prey for their illegal crimes.

If we did not have information systems we would most likely not be a sophisticated as we are today. We also would not have the issues of a lot of the crimes that we have today such as someone easily obtaining our identities, framing us for something that we didn’t do or even tarnishing reputations on the internet for revenge. Privacy in information systems is extremely important especially because the invasion of privacy can be very detrimental.

Works Cited

Bourgeois, David T. Chapter 12: The Ethical and Legal Implications of Information Systems. Go to the Cover Page of Information Systems for Business and Beyond, Published through the Open Textbook Challenge by the Saylor Academy, 28 Feb. 2014,

Computer Ethics: Ethics, Laws, Definition & Privacy. Teach Computer Science, 23 Aug. 2019,

Ethical & Security Issues in Information System.Guru99, Privacy Dead in an Online World? BBC News, BBC, 6 Oct. 2017,

PRIVACY: Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. Cambridge Dictionary,