Information Technology Ethics: Facebook is Chipping Away at Privacy

Discuss about the Information Technology Ethics for Facebook is Chipping Away at Privacy.

Doing Ethics Technique:

Doing ethics technique (DET) is a process that is capable of analyzing different ethical issues in any ICT related rather any other ethical dilemma. The process contains certain steps that are needed to be followed in order to achieve the actual ethical issue. The process also demonstrates some mitigation techniques that might be adopted in order to remove the appeared ethical issue. According to (Kosinski et al., 2015) DET is maintained by answering some questionnaires. The answers are provided based on the selected situation on ethical dilemma.

What is Going on?

The essay depicts a recent ethical dilemma that has been taken place in one of the most popular worldwide used social site Facebook. The incident is based on the privacy of this social platform. It is reported that currently Facebook is chipping away at the privacy level and the profile of the users has getting exposed without the authentication from the user itself (Hern, 2016). The reason behind the exploration of personal data is mainly happened due to the new additional search engine that works without any kind of warning. Still now the Facebook users do not have any idea about how to protect this. The situation had been faced by one of the Facebook users who deleted her profile in the year of 2014 but reconstructed her profile in the year of 2015 (Hern, 2016).             

What are the Facts?

Basically, the facts of this case are based on the privacy policy of Facebook. The story is based on a person who faced the privacy relevant problems while using the Facebook social media site. The victim of the story has a Facebook profile but she deleted that due to some personal reason in the year of 2014 (Hern, 2016).  Again in 2015 she opened a new account with minimal ad strictly required information. The main thing is this she did not want to keep in touch with any of her school friends rather her colleagues. She found that without her willingness people are able to search her with the help of Facebook search engine. Additionally, though she maintained a tough security and privacy in her Facebook account but still she found that people are able to look after her details and pictures and certain wall post without her permission (Browning, 2013). The fact is that, the permission of the users some personal details are still open to all other Facebook users.

What are the Ethical and Non-Ethical Issues?                

The story has certain ethical and some non-ethical issues from the victim’s point of view. Though the news is based on a particular Facebook account user but the issues are massively facing by all the Facebook users (Wang Chen & Wang, 2012). The intention of the social media is positive towards the users as it provides a worldwide connecting network and an independent platform to the Facebook users. The major ethical issue is this that personal details get getting explored in front of everyone without the willingness of the users. The data used privacy is too general in Facebook. According to the story the major unethical issue is this it manipulates the privacy of the system and surprisingly the personal data are getting shared among others.

Who is Affected?

In this particular story the victim is a Facebook account user. Though the victim is one user but still this might happen to anyone. The privacy is one of the most crucial sections during the implementation of any social networking site where users are coming and sharing their view points (Dennen & Burner, 2013).

What are the Ethical Issues and Implications?

Among several ethical issues the major issue defined in this story is sharing of personal data with unknown and stranger people. Though the user is not interested to share her details but due to lack of security and privacy rather for general privacy setting policies she is bound to share her details with strangers. Sometimes it is also found that personal data are getting misused by others for doing wrong works (Kosinski et al., 2015). On the other hand, if the misuses of personal data such as banking details and personal details might also create bad impact in the user’s mind.  

What can be done about it?

In order to resolve this issue, more complex emerging security tactics are needed to be implemented by the Facebook authority. The privacy customization option must be added to all the individual section of Facebook in order to combat the ethical issues (Bromberg-Krawitz, 2016). Apart from this, many emerging technologies startups are there who are building user friendly products with more enhanced privacy policies. These are needed to be added to the Facebook pages..

What are the Options?

In order to mitigate the issues occurred in the story, can be removed by incorporating certain privacy rules and regulations to it. Incorporation of Ello (anti Facebook social network), one of the latest startup public concern, that help the user to learn how the personal data can be kept secured (Casanovas, 2015). Decentralization of alternate Facebook can mitigate the issue. Privacy friendly alternative Google search can be involved within the system.

Which Option is Best - and Why?

Among the listed solution one of the best possible solutions to the ICT based Ethical dilemma is decentralization of alternate Facebook. Internet service is a vast but centralized structure and the maximum amount of data flow is handled by Google, Microsoft, and Facebook (Tello, 2013). Therefore, maximum numbers of data are handled by minimum companies, where the chances of risk occurrence are at highest (Browning, 2013). Thus, decentralized alternate to Facebook is the best option as in this case the data of the personnel can be stored with maximum safety. With the help of Diaspora software users can select their required node registers to retrieve or edit personal data. 

References 

Bromberg-Krawitz, M. (2016). Challenges of Social Media for Courts & Tribunals.           

Browning, J. G. (2013). Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn-Oh My: The ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission and Evolving Ethical Issues in the Use of Social Media. N. Ky. L. Rev., 40, 255.

Casanovas, P. (2015). Semantic web regulatory models: Why ethics matter.Philosophy & Technology, 28(1), 33-55.

Dennen, V., & Burner, K. (2013, October). Friending and footprints: privacy and ethical issues of facebook use in higher education. In BASTIAENS, Theo; MARKS, Gary. World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education, Las Vegas (pp. 642-648).

Hern, A. (2016). Facebook is chipping away at privacy – and my profile has been exposed. the Guardian. Retrieved 10 August 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/29/facebook-privacy-secret-profile-exposed

Kosinski, M., Matz, S. C., Gosling, S. D., Popov, V., & Stillwell, D. (2015). Facebook as a research tool for the social sciences: Opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations, and practical guidelines. American Psychologist, 70(6), 543.

Mohamed, A. A., Ibrahim, O., & Nilashi, M. (2015). The Security Awareness Framework for Social Network Sites Facebook: Case Study in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Journal of Soft Computing and Decision Support Systems, 2(3), 1-8.

Tello, L. (2013). Intimacy and «Extimacy» in Social Net-works. Ethical Boundaries of Facebook. Comunicar, 21(41), 205-213.

Wang, R., Chen, S., & Wang, X. (2012, May). Signing me onto your accounts through facebook and google: A traffic-guided security study of commercially deployed single-sign-on web services. In 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (pp. 365-379). IEEE.