University ICT Ethics Report: Analyzing Ethical Dilemmas in IT Systems

This report examines the ethical dilemmas arising from the lack of testing in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems. It identifies key ethical issues, including identity theft, hacking, and location privacy breaches, which can lead to financial and social harm for users, as well as da...Read More

Running head: ETHICAL DILEMMA
ETHICAL DILEMMA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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ETHICAL DILEMMA
Bibliography: A dilemma in IT: Select action end of video and see its consequence. (2019).
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mugeCY3vbxo
Chosen Video: Case Study 4
Ethical issues related to ICT
The ethical issues that are present due to the processing of lack of testing before coming
live includes chances of performing Identity theft of data that are stored in the database of the
system. Hacking of data and not maintaining location privacy. These issue might harm the users
of the IT system which might lead to decrease the good will of the business organization.
Implication of ethical problems
The implication of Identity theft might affect the victim in both financial as well as social
manner. In case of financial issue, disputing an individual’s identity will affect the usage of the
credit cards and banking liabilities in a negative manner. Bank account management will also be
an issue in case of getting victimized with identity theft. In case of identity theft, imposter can
act on behalf of the victim. Imposters can use the banking details of the victim and perform
transactions. This will affect the victim in financial manner (Frattasi & Della Rosa 2017). Denial
of identity will prevent the original owner from performing transaction via banking processes.
Despite being the fact that financial issue has been the major issue that is present, social aspect of
an individual is also affected in a negative manner. In case of identity thefts, gaining of
passwords of social media and email accounts also cause a significant affect to the victims.
Victims lose their contact details which might affect their daily lives. This issue of identity theft
is caused as the robustness of the framework is not adequate (Li et al, 2018). This lack of
adequate security measure is a result of lack of testing process.

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The implication of hacking of data also affects the corporate sector immensely. In case
the database of a corporate sector is hacked, data that are present in the database of the untested
IT system can be accessed in an unauthorized manner. Entire data set can be blocked from
accessing. This will affect the business organization. Alteration of the data that are stored in
database also affects the business management in a negative manner (Ma, Yang & Yang 2015).
Introduction if malware and ransomware affect the functioning of the system. This inefficient
functioning of the system leads to improper data management and data analysis. In case personal
data of the clients are well gathered without proper permission of the client’s whereabouts of the
client can be easily detected. This acts as an ethical issue that needs to be mitigated. With
altering of personal data via hacking, conflicts might arise as the data that will be conveyed by
the victim will contradict with the data that will be present in the database of the system. All this
will occur only if the robustness of the system in not maintained. This issue of lack of robustness
can arise only if proper testing of the system is not made. In case proper testing is made, issues
will get detected in the initial stage and hence can be mitigated before it affects the user.
Location privacy of individuals are also affected. This is one of the major affects that are
imposed is that tracking of each and every personnel can be done. This affects the processing in a
negative manner. This location detection can be performed only if the imposters can get into the
navigation channel of the system that is present with the travelling individual. This caused as
proper testing is not made (Ma et al, 2015). In case proper testing was made, this issue could
have been easily mitigated.
Solutions of the problems
The identity theft can occur when some steals or illegally uses some other people’s
identity to commit some kind of crime or fraud. Thus, it is very much important to resist the

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identity theft. The first and most essential step for preventing the identity theft is creating a fraud
alert. This fraud alert can be created on the credit report of the user. Also, to prevent the identity
theft it is very much important for the user to monitor their accounts on a regular basis so that if
anything suspicious happens then it can be identified easily (Thomas, Burmeister & Low 2018).
As most of the identity fraud happens with the credit card it is very much important to ensure
that automatic approval of credit card bill payment always remain off. Also, it is recommended
to always use a strong password. Common and easy passwords can be easily guessed thus
chances of identity theft increases.
Hacking is a big concern in present scenario and can cause huge amount of loss to the
individuals and organizations. Thus, hacking must be prevented with greater priority. Most of the
hacking is done by sending some spam emails thus the users need to be very cautious before
opening any type of mail that contains some external link or some attachments. Two factor
authentications can be a big weapon against hacking. Thus, it is always recommended to use the
two-factor authentication for secure logging (Trabelsi & McCoey 2016). Also, to prevent the
hacking it is always recommended to avoid the public and open connections. Encrypted
connections are always best to resist the hacking.
Location tracking is also a big concern in the present scenario and it need to be prevented
with higher concern as it violates privacy of a user. In current situation most of the applications
are able to track the user location. Thus, for an application-based location tracking can be denied
by simply restrict the location services to that particular application. Also, the GPS services can
be switched off to prevent precise location tracking. Location can be also track by the
identification of IP of the user. Thus, VPN can be used in this case for preventing the location
access.

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Problems as per the ACS
As per Australian Computer Society the ethical issues that are present in the process
includes violation of the primacy of the public interest, which states that interest of public must
be served in first case, in case of launching of the system without testing the same data breaching
might occur and this will affect the public interest in a negative manner.
Violation of enhancement of quality of life will also get performed. As the users of the
system that is not tested will get affected in a negative manner.

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Bibliography
A dilemma in IT: Select action end of video and see its consequence. (2019). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mugeCY3vbxo
Frattasi, S., & Della Rosa, F. (2017). Mobile positioning and tracking: from conventional to
cooperative techniques. John Wiley & Sons.
Li, H., Zhu, H., Du, S., Liang, X., & Shen, X. S. (2018). Privacy leakage of location sharing in
mobile social networks: Attacks and defense. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and
Secure Computing, 15(4), 646-660.
Ma, C., Yang, X., & Yang, M. H. (2015). Hierarchical convolutional features for visual tracking.
In Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on computer vision (pp. 3074-
3082).
Ma, C., Yang, X., Zhang, C., & Yang, M. H. (2015). Long-term correlation tracking.
In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (pp.
5388-5396).
Thomas, G., Burmeister, O., & Low, G. (2018). Issues of Implied Trust in Ethical
Hacking. ORBIT Journal, 2(1).
Trabelsi, Z., & McCoey, M. (2016). Ethical hacking in Information Security
curricula. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology
Education (IJICTE), 12(1), 1-10.