Selling Client Data: Professional and Ethical Issues

This report discusses the professional and ethical issues surrounding the selling of client data without permission. It covers topics such as confidentiality, integrity, and dealing with illegal activities. The report also explores the challenges and reflections of working with sensitive data.

Selling client data

Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Professional and Ethical Issues 4
Analysis 5,6
Reflection and Challenges 6
Conclusion 7
References 8

Introduction
In this report, I will be explaining about selling clients data without permission, how to
deal with issues for example, confidentiality, integrity, privacy and what happens of
you see something illegal. Also, I will be giving my own interpretation on how to work
professionally and ethically with sensitive data and how it will challenge when going
into the workplace. The key issue profession I will be introducing will be about
companies selling client data without their use of permission and the issues I will be
addressing is how clients have responded without being consent to their knowledge
of their data being used.

Professional and Ethical Issues
Confidentiality involves a set of rules that are implemented through privacy
agreement that restricts access on data. To deal with confidentiality in workplaces
such as in IT sector would be the following using control access meaning that when
you store personal information online ensure that you use a strong password, firewall
software and encryption. Using passwords to control access to private information
you must ensure that you use a strong password and keep changing it regularly.
Also, when personal information is leaked it is too due to companies own employees
that are the one with the risk, this is because they have not had the correct training,
or they were not provided with any training. When training your employees about
protecting confidential information it is vital, they understand the risk involved and
you should explain why it is important and provide practical training such as using
secure password and destroying important documents with personal information on
them.
Integrity is the way of being truthful and showing honesty of one’s actions. Integrity is
the way of behaving in an ethical and principled way. One way integrity can be
enforced in the workplace is treating everyone the same, acknowledging your
mistakes, performing self-assessment, and rewarding honesty. Examples of integrity
are the following show up on time, ready to do work, being honest and many more.
Integrity is important because it can create a positive environment in the workplace
where colleagues can work well each other, respecting one another and trusting
each other.
Furthermore, if you see something illegal the first thing you must do is alert someone
with authority to deal with it. This can be anything such as someone acting
suspicious, sexual harassment in public and anything else you think that is illegal. An
example can be lets say you are working for a company providing a service and it’s
like another company service and you and some team members are part of creating
the system what would your ethical responsibility be? If you see one of your team
members doing something illegal doing for instance, stealing personal information
such as credit card details what would your responsibility be?
Analysis
The negative side of ethical issues selling clients data without their use of permission
is illegal and you could be in trouble with the law and could be given a hefty fine or
even face jail. The first principle of ethical information that are personal to someone
is you must have consent from them to use their data. When an organization notifies
people about its data collection and policies being used, they can decide if they want
the business to use their data collection or not. Gathering someone information
without the person knowledge that it is being used is illegal. The ethical issues in this
are if someone is not informed that their data is being used are they allowed to
consent or withhold the consent? For instance, many people download software on
the web for free such as firewall, spyware and many more. When these types of
software’s are downloaded, the user has no knowledge that their data is being

collected such as the user activity on the web and data is then sent over to the
software company which can be a spyware company for instance, and this can then
track someone activities on the internet and collect password such as credit card
numbers which is illegal.
However, the positive side of ethical issues here would be that most businesses
need to use and access people personal information such as the NHS and doctors.
In this instance, when you have an appointment with your local GP, they would need
to have access to your information such as where you live, DOB, nationality and
many more.
Nevertheless, many people argue that this principle do not protect them as many
businesses and organisation have their own version of fair information principle for
instance, companies can give personal data to law enforcement and government
agencies when told to do so. Some inform their customers when they give their
personal information to the government, and some do not. Also, using the principle
of fair information principle to new technologies is complicated as they do not
address privacy issues for example, cameras in public places which can be Google
Maps, Google Earth, and Police camera systems.
Reflection and challenges
When working professionally and ethically with sensitive data it is important to be
cautious when going into the workplace. Many businesses and organisations have
codes of professional conduct. They provide their employees a list of conduct to
remind them of ethical values and what their professional responsibilities are.
The biggest challenge of working professionally and ethically with sensitive data is
growth of data is expanding every minute. More than 1.7 megabytes of new data is
being produced every second. Many businesses will need to ensure they can keep
their customers personal data safe and protected. Many businesses have been hit
with fines because of their low security and this can make them a target because
they will not be able to handle the threats, and this can put a business at risk of a
data breach. To be able to deal with this challenge many businesses must ensure
their security is able to handle hackers, threats, and viruses. Also, businesses must
ensure they spend a huge investment in key security technologies for instance, data
archiving, backups, and data infrastructure so this can ensure customers data is
safeguarded and can be recovered and restored.
In addition to this, another challenge of working with sensitive data is human error.
Human errors are common, and this can substantially affect data privacy and
protection. Employees can use weak passwords, delete data by mistake and can fall
for phishing scams. To be able to deal with this challenge in the workplace ensure
you have been trained to deal with these types of incidents for example, ensuring
your company has a team of security experts to show you security awareness and
put you through training programs that can help you reduce the risk of human errors.
Also, data loss prevention tools can help to avoid end users from disclosing personal
data.

Conclusions
To conclude, the analysis of the issues are many people do not realise their data is
being used by companies and most do not know what they are consenting too. Most
companies do not tell users that they are going to use their data which makes the
users feel violated and frustrated with the companies as they did not consent them
first to use their data. This is where ethical issues are important because Informed
consent is crucial when using another person data as if you do not consent them to
use their data this can cause a hefty fine or risk prison sentence.

References
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