Unethical use of computers nowadays

It is legal to use computer but it is unethical to do the following:

Digital Media Piracy:

Digital media piracy is a leading unethical practice using computers. Piracy is regarded as illegal circulation and distribution of music, movies, books and other intellectual media. As internet is a very broad spectrum it is nearly impossible to catch the responsible person. Piracy is actually termed as illegal intrusion on copyrights owned by the owners of that media.

An organization using information gained through piracy may receive a termination letter from the owner is the biggest possibility. Fines for the same may be added to it. Piracy can be simply understood as acquiring and using someone else’s work for our personal or institutional benefits without their prior knowledge.

Ransomware Attacks:

Thieves generally use the obscurity of the internet to attack businesses organizations. By hacking into a company’s main server, cyberattacks can detain the company victimized. The hacker encrypts the entire website, shutting the business down until the business owners pay for the hackers various demands which can be converged as veto of service attack. These kind of cyber related victims can be anyone that is a person or an organization, to avoid these the servers and security systems should be updated and tested frequently so that if there are any glitches in the system then it can be fixed before it becomes vulnerable.

Identity Theft:

Apart from shielding a business against Ransomware, businesses must protect personal details of all consumers. Identity theft distresses the consumers. No matter how big or small a company is they are vulnerable to information fissures. Most of the big shot companies have been hacked by thieves and all the personal information of people have come to risk. Hackers generally obtain all the personal details which are required to activate social accounts. Liberalizing private information can be a huge risk personally and professionally.

Financial theft:

Some cases have been reported in which the hackers access the bank accounts and all the financial information stored on a server and diverts all the digital money to some charitable account or accounts which cannot be traced my the government and redemption of that money is quite impossible.

Intellectual Property Theft:

Piracy isn’t the lone vulnerability created by hackers or cyber thieves intellectual theft is far more impactful. Competitors acquire plethora of schemes to attain proprietary information that costs millions of dollars to other companies for development. Theft often includes patented or patent-pending information. These kind of thefts are generally conducted by someone who is working inside the company and have access to these servers which has this vital information. There are many ways to avoid this but if the moles are internal the need to meet the ends become impossible.

Real Life Examples

1. Girl kills herself taking drug that website recommended.

The website was built with the help of a program which asked questions about the symptoms of our problem and advised the drug which should be taken if you are not having any allergies related to that drug. After that Bill Sourour blogged that this is “ the code I’m still ashamed of” because he learned of a girl that killed herself after taking the drug as recommended. One of the side effects was depression or suicidal thoughts. IT Professionals should reconsider just doing as they are told. Well this was within the law that is it was legal but his site took someone’s life and that was against his ethics and the guilt cannot be changed.

2. VW emissions cheating scandal.

Volkswagen company had a software which gave false results related to emission from the testing car eventually everyone came to know about it and it affected the company a lot. As an IT professional it is legal to write codes but what will be the effect of the code we write depends on our ethics and we should be aware of where and how our code will be used. VW software puts all IT under suspicion

3. Asked to lose files needed in investigation.

When the computer did not had any data on its hard-disk an IT professional was hired by the people on whom the investigation was running, the IT professional was said to declare that the backup files were damaged and corrupt and the data couldn’t be recovered. He demurred, as any IT professional should as it was within the laws to say that the files are damaged but it’s unethical to cheat and the professional decided to be ethical and he didn’t cheated.

4. Legal firm bills two clients for same elapsed time.

An IT professional was asked to make the time tracking software for a firm of lawyers. They requested it to be built so that starting a second timer should not stop the time being totaled on any currently running one. He felt a “ twinge of guilt” because he felt that billing two clients for the same elapsed time wasn’t right, but it was his job to listen to his clients. Well here the professional didn’t had a choice as he was doing what was within the law and which was legal but as he didn’t protested it was unethical of him.

5. Underdeveloped countries’ copyright.

Mohammad reported that underdeveloped countries didn’t had copyright rules and because of this anyone in the country can copy anyone’s work and state it as his or a competitor can just copy someone’s idea and spoil the business of his competitor. Here, IT Professionals should know that an action is not always ethical just because the law allows it. It can hurt or destroy a person’s career or his hard work of lifetime.