Group items tagged

A British Telcom, TalkTalk, was hacked and demanded for ransom. 2 stakeholders: The company TalkTalk and subscribers to the company. The company was hacked for ransom and the data that was hacked were the personal information of the customers of TalkTalk. Issue #1: The hackers have gained very sensitive information such as credit card numbers and dates of birth. Negative: The hackers can use other people's money using the credit card information they received. They can also use the hacked information to do identity theft. Positive: There is no positive side to this. Issue #2: Some users and security experts criticized the company for going public about the hacking before knowing all the details. Positive: The company can use the criticism to help improve their company. Negative: The criticism can also reduce customers and statistics of their shares ratings.

Hi, Your post provides good insight to a negative side of the effects technology has on businesses. Both company owners, and customers must be aware of unfortunate possibilities like being hacked. I like how the two issues you addressed deals with both the technological side of things, hackers and what information can be leaked, and the business side, what the occurrence of this event means for the company itself.

Scenario : At least 22.1 million people that are current or former US government workers since 2001's information was hacked and possibly breached into by hackers who stole the Office of Personal Management (OPM) data. It is believed that China stole this information to increase their collection of data of intelligence on US government employees, according to the article. Social / Ethical Issues : China and hackers now have personal information about millions of Americans which is a big ethical issue because no one knows how they are going to use that information and no one knows how much information they actually got. Also, China could use their newly-gained information against government workers unless the workers release personal government information about the US. This could possibly be a huge problem for the US if China basically uses espionage against US government employees and for their own personal gain. IT systems and things the hackers were able to breach: fingerprints databases social security numbers job assignments performance evaluations records on family members and close friends who were listed on job applications for security purposes financial and health records computer user names and passwords Stakeholders: China - Given that they stole information from the United States government intelligence, their relationship between the US and China will weaken. United States government and citizens- US gov't will now have less trust in China and also have a weakened relationship with China. The United States will most likely also take new security measures to make sure their information is more secure, and United States government workers will now be very hesitant to give out their information.

Chinese police have arrested hackers after the US government supplied them with a list of cybercrime suspects, the Washington Post reports. The hackers are believed to have stolen research and development information from several US firms. The arrests came shortly before Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the US for talks - partly about cyber security.

Situation: With countries such as the UK and India already implementing e-voting as their main method of voting for their desired candidates, it is hard not to see that e-Voting is slowly taking the concept of voting for elections, to a new front. Social and Ethical Significance: The article brings to us the example of the 2003 elections in the UK and how e-Voting "failed to make an impact to the people." That was moreover, because there were many people who didn't own a smart device/laptop, and a few didn't even know what the internet was, yet. The Issue with e-Voting then was that it hadn't made the impact because it wasn't the primary method of communication yet. Online voting has been trialled all over the world now, in hopes that it may be implemented in the future. However, developers have claimed that they see major amounts of issues with the softwares and networks/servers that are online. They claim that the reliability and security standards are very hard to meet, when it comes to e-voting systems. Furthermore, they have stated that th requirements are very tough and too high to be met, unlike other transactions. "Online banking suffers problems but refunds are possible after checking your bank statement. You can't 'refund' a vote and 'vote statements' can't be provided to check your vote was correctly recorded as that would enable vote selling and coercion." Stakeholders: Candidates - If the servers are mendled with by a virus or hacker, the results of the ballot could potentially be rigged and the candidate would lose his/her chances of winning the elections. Voters - If the servers are mendled with by a virus or hacker, the voter's vote can potentially be changed, and as a result, the voter feels a loss of security.

In New Zealand, numerous security and privacy issues of their e-voting system couldn't be addressed in time for the elections so they scrapped the plan. 2 stakeholders: The people running for elections and the people voting. The turnout of the elections would decide which person running would end up as the local president/prime minister which would also affect the people who voted during the elections. 2 social/ethical issues: If the issues with the e-voting systems weren't fixed by the time of the election, there could have been risks of hacking into the system and purposely altering the votes to go the way of one of the people running in the election. If it wasn't purposeful, there may have been accidents occurring with the system which would cause some votes to be miscounted or counted as invalid which would make it unfair. Possible solution: To help with the security risks, they can implement firewalls and password protection to prevent hackers from accessing the voting system.

In the article, the author describes how the music label, Sony, was creating an anti-piracy software to try and stop piracy in 2001 with Michael Jackson's song. They were unsuccessful in the beginning of their studies, because of a radio company played the song without being authorized. Sony was hoping that recent online piracy websites would not destroy the sales of Jackson's album. Even today, their are many record companies that have the same worries. Today, piracy is even more severe, because once a copy of a song is released on the internet, it is readily available to everyone to listen to and download. The hackers used a software/website called Napster to create MP3s (converted from the CDs), and send them across the internet. A way artists are trying to stop this problem, is to not allow free streaming networks to play their songs without pay. This allows the artists to be successful, and also is a way to try and stop illegal downloading of songs and albums. It is expensive to create an album, Jackson's took $28 million and 3 years; the artist should at least be able to have success, and not have to worry about trolls pirating their music.

Situation : In the United States right now, we are in the process of choosing a new president. For those who do not know, the election process in the US consists of two conflicting opinions of two different parties (Democrats and Republicans.) The Republicans basically believe in lower taxes and less government intervention, while the Democrats believe in raising taxes and more government action. Based on the article, the current state of the US electoral process shows that electronic voting machines guarantee a Republican victory in 2016. Social / Ethical Concerns : Influence on Politiicans - The article claims (this article is VERY pro democratic and VERY pro Hilary Clinton) that the candidate who has the most votes won't in fact win. Rather, the article claims that unless Hilary wins each major swing state by 10% more than the Republican or the corruption of politics with online voting does not end, she will not win. Security issues - The machines may be easy to hack into with the right knowledge and tools, and a hacker could easily sway the country's votes. Influence on People - The best candidate with the most votes from the electoral college should win, so this is a major social and ethical concern because of the idea that America is all about the people deciding the future of the country, and if the right candidate isn't chosen, it could affect our future for generations to come. IT systems flaws: -sometimes the voters don't click on the right candidate and they are mad because the computer won't let them click on the candidate they actually want -machines can malfunction and freeze -some of the voting places are in major favor of one candidate and they may sway the votes after the tallied online -electronic voting machine may not even be present and paper ballots may be used (it's not fair to have some people with paper ballots and some with online voting ballots) -electricity dependency may cause a computer to shut down if there is a loss of power

An article relating to targeted advertising through the use of installed cameras within billboards. These tiny cameras gather details about passer-by - their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. Social and ethical significance: 1)Privacy and anonymity - although Quividi claims that the process is completely anonymous, the details of the camera's recordings must be stored in a central database which, if not protected properly, could be susceptible to hackers and other perpetrators of crime. 2) Security - the safety of the data stored in the central database will be in danger if not properly protected. The data will most likely contain details of a person's identity. 3) Surveillance - the cameras must be connected to a network in order to to function to its full capacity. Once again, these cameras could be hacked into and used for surveillance purposes, which leads back to the issue of privacy and anonymity on the street. The general public, who are one of the stakeholders, are deeply involved in this matter as it is their identity that is being scrutinized by a small camera - in most cases the public are unaware that the billboard is identifying who they are and their presumed interests. The company, Quividi, is another stakeholder in this issue as they are responsible for this new technology. The advantages of this kind of "ultra-targeted advertising" is that companies can now know for sure what kind of advertisements to place and where, without the need of analysing the kinds of people that live in the particular area of interest etc; the camera installed in the billboards have the ability to do it themselves. Also, as the billboard is digital, there is no manpower involved in constantly changing the large billboard every other week or so. The main disadvantages to this is of course the invasion of privacy for the public but also the maintenance that would be required to keep the camera clean as well as updated