IT Ethics

Introduction

In the initial years, the development of IT brought a new wave to many global organizations and businesses. Initially, IT had very limited applications and it didn't have any large impact on people and the society. Today, with the advancement in technology, IT has become a significant part of every business and organization in the global market. Not only business organization IT has become a part of people's personal activity. Now days, there are various opportunities' for millions of individuals to use IT for unethical activities.

It is because of these reasons that it has become essential for education sector and business organizations to address the ethical challenges of IT.

Discussion

Societal ethical changes

The ethical changes caused in the society by the use of IT are very extensive. In early years, IT was utilized for very particular and specific industries. This trend transformed in the nineteenth century when IT and its tools emerged as an evolving industry. Within a few years, the manual world turned into a digital world controlled by the tools of IT. Today, everyone and business organization interacts with each other using IT. In the modern world, due to continuous interaction of IT, people have greater access to information, which can be sued in unethical manners (Brooks, 2010)

Many society ethical changes have been occurred due to access to sensitive and confidential information by the general public. These changes include accessing confidential information for the purpose of personal gain, using engineering programs to get access to trade secrets and also using various tools of IT to victimize other people. These ethical issues and challenges have led to the introduction of various laws and security measures that are formulated for the purpose of protecting people and business organization from vulnerabilities. However, these policies have not been able to solve the ethical issues (Brooks, 2010). Therefore, information techno logy continues to create ethical issues and helps people in stealing identities.

Ethical usage of IT

The ethical usage of IT has to be analyzed on two levels. The first level is the personal level or the private level of the individual. At this level, IT relates to how people use the tools of IT. The ethical use of the tools of IT at the private level involves communicating with friends and family, operating legal business online, selling and purchasing online and also publishing information on various websites. It also involves making deposits from the personal bank account and also involves collecting and sending information for legitimate purposes.

At the personal level, many people can also engage in various unethical activities. Individual use IT and its tools to conduct various frauds. Various examples of conducting fraud by using IT include hacking people's computer and gaining access to their personal information. At personal level, individuals also use IT to corrupt and steal data from computers and can also create new identity for the purpose of personal gain. Other malicious activity that individuals may engage while using IT such as cyber bullying, spreading of various computer viruses and using different ...