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Information Technology Ethical Issues

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICAL ISSUES

Ethics is in accordance with the standards or rules for behavior or a practice especially the standards of professionalism. Information ethics is defined as a branch of ethics that is directed to the relationship between dissemination, organization, use and creation of information, and the moral and ethical codes governing human behavior in a society. Information system have raised ethical questions for both organizations and Individuals since they all create opportunities for intense social change, and thus putting at risk the current distribution of powers, rights, money and obligation. There are various ethical issues in information system privacy being one of them. Privacy is the right of a particular organization, including the state or individual to be left alone, free from interference and surveillance from others. Personal information of a particular individual or organization is critical, and the way they are handled can significantly interfere with the individual or the group. Privacy entails what information about an individual or an organization must a reveal to others, extend to which the information should be given and under what conditions. The information of a particular person or group should be safeguarded adequately to prevent its access by others without permission or consent. There are some of personal information that must be revealed to others, for example, the age of an individual, address, gender and marital status. This information is precious especially when the individual is an employee of a particular company or organization since it helps in identifies the particular individual in the company. Different organizations collect massive amounts of data and use for its various purposes, for example, profit and loss analysis, its economic status, and money allocation to various departments in the organization. This helps a lot in the smooth running of the organization and used for analysis purpose. Some individuals or organizations can breach privacy and access people’s information that they are not obligated to without the consent of the people or organizations owning the respective information and end up producing a copyright of what they have. Therefore, it is crucial to safeguard the information and maintain its privacy. There are different protective measures that can be used as security safeguards and enforcement actions in order to address privacy issues. These measures involve both humans and technology.

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