My (Justin Desousa's) Expirence with Ethical Implications of Informational Technology

Have you ever had a time where somebody knew too much about you?

     

    Hi everybody, today I wanted to share my encounters and involvement with personal information of mine being collected and shared without my knowledge. There is not a doubt that we all come in contact with this in our daily lives. The most prolonged example of this that I have had to change my behavior with is my phone number. Looking through my call history to confirm this I can confidently state that I receive up to around three calls a day from "spam likely" or unknown. We are all familiar with the stereotypical "we have been trying to reach you regarding your car's extended warranty" as well "Microsoft tech support saying that you have a virus". These cons may seem like they are similar in nature when in practice they have different goals. The first instance that I referenced seeks to gather more information about your vehicle and insurance to then sell while the other will attempt to extort a direct credit card payment. As we become more knowledgeable of these malpractices we become better at detecting, outmaneuvering, and preventing them. My adaptation to this has been to ignore numbers that are not in my contacts altogether. Although this may restrict opportunities for me like say obtaining my friend's new number or a future employer trying to reach me I then have to take initiatives to become closer to the people that are important to me.

    Can we prevent our information from falling into the     wrong hands?

       

 You may be wondering to yourself if we can do anything meaningful to prevent information leaks that are out of our control. Going back to what I was saying about my # being compromised, It is difficult to confirm whether or not this could be attributed to the prior owner/user or if I entered my phone number for an online order or perhaps to make a free trial on Blogger. Two things are evident to me, aversion and moderation can prevent this. however, If you are using the Internet or other web services, you will never be able to prevent this. Consider data mining for example, The neckbeards that look into videogame files to uncover leaks for a new update or expansion. You could be employed for a company like Bethesda with very secure parameters and do your job perfectly but even the worst ethical hacker could still uncover your work files. Our passwords and locations, NOTHING IS SAFE. That is why tech companies are so profitable.  Google is valued at 1.5 trillion and they don't just track your browsing and search history. Every major social media company is also complicit collaborator. The documentary "The Social Dilemma" does an extensively detailed analysis of this. One thing that I would like to point out that they display in this film is that the people who do this as a profession is that they are concerned about technology's impact on their families because they created and understand these associated risks better than everyone. On a deeper level, this discontent is associated with the ethical standards of their profession. Although a large part of the Socail Dilema focuses on social media selling peoples attentions many of the same principals apply to information technology's ethics.

What are the ethical questions when it comes to collecting information?

        Do you as a person believe that it is justified to earn a profit off of the exchange or sale of anothers information? I would say that the answer to this question depends on the person and how sensative the information is. Obviously I dont want creepy people getting a hold of my medical records becuase it is my bodily autonomy. In another case although I may find targeted advertisment an invasion of the privacy of my headspace, it is less intrusive in that this does not cause direct distress nor harm to me and often times can go unoticed. It is easy to quantify the order in which these greivences bother me although considering that they all bother me to some degree, it becomes difficult to express which of these minor inconviences would warrnet me filing a lawsuit in a world where this is a more serious issue. All that I know is that my present self would just suck it up and endure the consiquences of these malpractices becuase of how difficult it is to comprehend how these occorances add up and thus make well judged descion on wethe or not to do something about it. Thank you for reading up to this point and I hope that you learned somethin meaningful from my reflection.