Business And Corporation Law Assignments

Running Head: BUSINESS AND CORPORATION LAW
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Applied Business Ethics
12/31/2019
Student’s Name

Applied Business Ethics 1
Contents
Article 1...........................................................................................................................................3
Overview of article 3
Ethical issues 4
Affected stakeholders 5
Application of ethical theories 6
Resolutions/Recommendations 7
Conclusion 7
Article 2...........................................................................................................................................8
Overview of the article 8
Ethical Issues 8
Affected stakeholders 10
Application of ethical theories 11
Recommendations/Resolutions 11
Conclusion 12
References......................................................................................................................................13
Appendix 1: Article 1....................................................................................................................15
Facebook learned about Cambridge Analytica as early as September 2015, new documents show
.......................................................................................................................................................15
Appendix 2: Article 2....................................................................................................................19
CBA faces criminal charges over CommInsure scandal............................................................................19
Key points: 19
Treasurer says banks need to face full force of the law 21
CommInsure scandal: Who's who? 22
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Applied Business Ethics 2

Applied Business Ethics 3
Article 1
Overview of article
The article selected hereby is written by Lauren Feiner and has been published on the
online news portal of CNBC as of 23 August 2019. The article is titled as Facebook learned
about Cambridge Analytica as early as September 2015, new documents show and can be
accessed through https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/23/facebook-releases-new-cambridge-
analytica-documents.html. The article is significant in itself as it made a claim regarding one of
the biggest business ethics collapse reported in 2018 where the company Facebook failed to
maintain the data security of users. The case is related to the data security breach where personal
data of millions of Facebook users have been accessed and used by the third party without
getting the appropriate informed consent. When the scandal has come into news originally, it was
claimed by Facebook that the same was not aware of the fact that data of its users was accessible
to a third-party app. Millions of Facebook users have been affected by this incident.
The article selected hereby claimed that Facebook knew the conduct of Cambridge
Analytica by early September 2015 (Feiner, 2019). Some new documents have been released as
well as employees of the company also stated that they were contacting companies to know the
manner in which the same were using Facebook data. The article further informed that in April
2018, CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg testified that in 2015 as soon as Facebook learned that
Cambridge Analytica accessed the personal information of users through a third-party app and
therefore the company took immediate action by preventing such use of data. In July 2019,
"security and exchange commission" has filed a complaint where the same claimed that

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Facebook was already aware of an instance of data misuse (Sec.gov, 2019). Many of the blog
posts have been discussed in this article where different people, as well as Facebook, made
statements regarding its awareness of the event of data breach and activities of Cambridge
Analytica. Nevertheless, the document shows that Facebook knew the potential policy of
Cambridge Analytica in early September 2015. As per one of the employees of Facebook, data
scarping activities of these apps are likely non-compliant.
Ethical issues
The security of information is concerned for everyone and becomes more crucial when
the information is personal. The main ethical issue involved in the whole case was a breach of
privacy of millions of users. The article selected hereby talked about a data breach that reported
in 2018. Facebook continuously denied accepting the fact that the same was aware of any
potential breach. Social media is a platform that is being used by people of every age group.
Facebook is a trusted app and every user used to trust the same very much unless this happening.
Being a social media platform, it was the responsibility of the company to keep this trust and to
review the compliance with security and privacy policy on a timely basis as well as to review
data breach cases. Business ethics and corporate governance are some important concepts of
today's business. Cybersecurity is a sensitive area and therefore every business has a liability to
collect, handle and share personal information of all of its stakeholders. Respecting the privacy
of shareholders is one of the crucial aspects of business ethics.
Every country has a data security law that needs to be complying with by every business
out there. In this manner, it is clear that in addition being ethical issues data breach is also
considered as a legal issue. To understand the issue in detail this is to state that the same started
when one of the professors of Cambridge University, Aleksandra Kogan has developed an app

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named "This is your digital life." This application outlines some questions where Facebook users
have posted their political interest, which further has been used by Cambridge Analytica, a
political data analytics company to support Donald Trump in the US presidential election
(Bbc.com, 2018). It was claimed later on that this information has politically used and people
have provided their information after being consented for the same. The lead reason behind this
incident was the low consideration of Facebook towards data security activities. The breach
could be prevented if the company has conducted due diligence of the third party before
providing access to the third party. In other words, the negligence of Facebook can be
understood as a lead reason for this breach. Facebook has later confirmed that 87 million users
have been affected by this data breach incident (Wired.com, 2018). Because of the incident on
Facebook, the same had to pay a penalty of $5 billion.
Another ethical issue that reflects under this case is the lack of focusing on the user's
interest and breach of their trust. Under corporate social responsibility, a business has a liability
to consider the best interest of the communities in which the same operate. For Facebook, users
of the app are an important stakeholder and therefore the company needed to consider their
interest. Although Facebook did not use the data of users unethically it, allowed third parties to
use this data without confirming the possibility of risk. In this manner, Facebook breached the
trust of the community members, which defeated its goodwill.
Affected stakeholders
Many of the stakeholders have affected by the ethical breach discussed above. Here this
is necessary to state that no stakeholder has been affected positively. The first group of
stakeholders, which has directly been affected is the use of Facebook. They have lost their
personal information to a third party app that has used the subjective information in the manner,