Ethical Analysis of the 2018 Quora Data Breach and Its Implications

This report provides a comprehensive ethical analysis of the 2018 Quora data breach, exploring the incident through the "Doing Ethics" technique. It outlines the facts, issues, and affected parties, identifying key ethical concerns such as data privacy violations and the breach of user trust. The report examines the ethical implications, considering utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and contract theory to evaluate the actions of Quora's management. It presents various options for addressing the ethical issues, ultimately arguing for the importance of proactive security measures and ethical decision-making in the context of ICT. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of ethical behavior in the deployment and use of ICT, highlighting the need for human values and attitudes to guide technological advancements.

Running head: ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Ethics and Professional Practice: Quora Data Breach 2018
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Doing Ethics Technique for Ethical Analysis of the Case Study...........................................2
2.1 What is going on?.............................................................................................................2
2.2 What are the facts?...........................................................................................................2
2.3 What are the issues?.........................................................................................................3
2.4 Who is affected?...............................................................................................................4
2.5 What are the ethical issues and implications?..................................................................4
2.6 What can be done about it?..............................................................................................5
2.7 What are the options?.......................................................................................................6
2.8 Which option is the best and why?..................................................................................7
3. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
Ethics could be referred to as the moralized philosophy, which involves
systemization, protecting as well as recommendation of few concepts for accurate and
inaccurate conduct. Ethical behaviour is important and significant to ensure that the
respective individual is ethical and is following ethics under every circumstance (Frank,
2013). In November 2018, the extremely popular question and answer website, Quora was
being breached and personal data of more than 100 million users were being hacked by
hackers and it is considered as one of the most vulnerable cyber attacks in past 6 months.
This following report summaries a brief description on ethical analysis for the case scenario
of Quora data breach. Doing Ethics Technique would be utilized in this report for completing
the analysis.
2. Doing Ethics Technique for Ethical Analysis of the Case Study
2.1 What is going on?
On 30th November, 2018, the most popular US based question and answer website, in
which questions are being asked and then answers are provided and edited by the Internet
users in form of opinions; was eventually hacked and more than 100 million users lost their
confidential data (Quora Data Breach. 2018). According to the CEO of Quora, this hacking or
exposing of data was being done and the computer systems and machines were being
compromised by a malicious third party. However, the organization noted that this incident
was eventually questionable to result in the identity theft since this particular web site does
not collect any kind of confidential information like social security number and credit cards
or bank details, although email addresses, contact numbers and names were hacked in the
process.

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2.2 What are the facts?
The major facts in this particular case study of Quora data breaching are as follows:
i) The social platform or question answer website, Quora suffered major issues related
to data loss as the confidential data such as email address information as well as other private
messages of more than 100 million users were being exposed after the computer systems
were being compromised by a specific malicious third party (Noddings, 2013).
ii) This data breach majorly affected more than half a billion users and the question
and answer web site, Quora’s CEO, Adam D’Angelo confirmed that each and every system
of the web site was hacked by leaving user information and individual account data
potentially compromised (Peters, 2015).
iii) The confidential or sensitive information of the users comprised of PII information
like users’ names, IP addresses, encrypted passwords, email addresses, settings of user
accounts, user IDs, public actions, personalization data as well as content like comments,
upvotes, questions, answers and blog posts (Critchley, 2014).
iv) These confidential data, which had been imported from the linked networks like
interests, demographic information, access tokens and contacts.
v) The users did not get a little idea about this hacking of data and hence it impacted
on the users majorly. Moreover, the management or the senior authority of Quora did not
have the notification of this data threat until 30th November and hence the intrusion exceeded
to the most significant limit.
2.3 What are the issues?
The major issues identified in the case study of Quora data breach are given below:

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i) The first as well as the foremost issue identified in the case study would be that the
confidential data of over 100 million users was being hacked by few hackers to obtain
personal messages and encrypted passwords (Gatens, 2013).
ii) The second issue would be that the respective systems of the users were being
compromised by a malicious third party and there was a high chance that apart from data
hacking, these data would have been stolen for wrong intentions.
iii) Another significant issue would be that it mainly resulted in identity theft and due
to which the users were not pre notified and hence it became vast and expanding vulnerable
to digital intrusion (Kagan, 2018).
iv) The next issue is that the management of Quora did not take any precaution
regarding hacking or data intrusion and hence was unable to stop the breach.
2.4 Who is affected?
Each and every user of Quora was being affected in this data intrusion. The main
reason for this affect is that their personal information or data was being hacked or intruded
and the respective users did not get an idea of such threat. The second affected entity in this
particular case study was the organizational management (Ross, 2013). The hacked data
caused significant issue related to data intrusion and they lost users’ trust to a higher level.
2.5 What are the ethical issues and implications?
The ethical issues should be properly identified so that the respective organization is
able to deal with all types of issues or complexities in a better manner and such issues should
be eradicated on time for the purpose of making the situation or organization error free
(Ciulla, 2014). The most significant ethical issues in this significant case study of Quora data
breach are given below:

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i) The first as well as the most significant ethical issue in this case study is that the
sensitive data of the users such as names, contact numbers, email addresses, personal
accounts and many more were being hacked by hackers. It is extremely unethical to hack or
utilize such types of sensitive data without even taking consent from the users (Singer, 2013).
The users did not have any idea about the issue and hence it created a major issue for each
and every user.
ii) The second important and noteworthy ethical issue is that the personal messages of
these victims were also being hacked and it is quite unethical to hack anyone’s personal
messages under any circumstance.
iii) The next significant and vital ethical issue is that Quora did not involve any
precaution so that this type of vulnerability could be avoided and hence it gave rise to this
type of vulnerability or issue in the subsequent website (Coates, 2016).
iv) The fourth distinctive ethical issue is that the data, which was hacked, could not be
eventually retrieved or saved and hence it became a major issue for the management and
senior authority of Quora.
2.6 What can be done about it?
The above mentioned four ethical issues are extremely important and significant and
should be eradicated on time effectively and efficiently. There are some of the major and the
most significant ethical theories that are required to be taken into consideration while analysis
of case scneario of Quora (Reamer, 2013). Four classical theories of ethics are utilitarianism,
deontology, virtue ethical theory and finally contract theory.
a) Utilitarianism Theory: First and one of the most important classical theories of
ethics is the utilitarianism theory. This is a version of consequentialism that refers to the fact
each and every consequence of an action or activity are the only standards of accurate and

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improper. When any of the consequences is unethical in nature, it is evident that the
respective organization would not be gaining any advantage or benefit (Frank, 2013). There
are several varieties of utilitarianism and the respective situation or action should provide
utility to the society. For the case study of Quora, it was noted that the respective situation
was unethical as it did not provide any utility to the users.
ii) Deontology Theory: According to deontological theory, any situation is required to
be judged on the basis of its moral rights and whether the consequences of the actions are
providing major effectiveness or not (Trevino & Nelson, 2016). This particular ethical
framework is completely dependent on the previously defined set of rules as well as policies
to properly function for the environment. For the case study of Quora, it was analysed the
organization did not keep any precaution or safety measure for their website and hence they
were unethical.
iii) Virtue Ethics: It is a normative ethical theory that emphasizes on virtues of
character and mind. The respective individual or situation, who did not follow virtue in their
work is termed as unethical in nature (Frank, 2013). For the case study of Quora, it was
analysed the organizational management did not take steps and hence they were unethical.
iv) Contract Theory: The social agreement between the organization and users of
Quora was being broken by the senior management and hence it is termed as unethical in
nature.
The ethical issues could be resolved by considering these four classical theories so
that it becomes easier to make the case study ethical (Fromm, 2013). The management of
Quora should have taken few security steps to resolve the issues.
2.7 What are the options?
The major options are as follows:

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i) Quora should have taken few security steps so that they would have been able to
resolve the issues effectively and such data breach would not have occurred. This action
would even had ensured work ethics.
ii) The hacked data should have been recovered by specific cyber security expert and
hence the issue could have been resolved efficiently.
2.8 Which option is the best and why?
Amongst the two above mentioned options, the best option would be that Quora
should have security steps for stopping data breach and hence ethics would have been
maintained. These types of ethical issues mainly arise from effective development and broad
spread utilization of ICT and are termed as the most significant concerns (Trevino & Nelson,
2016). There are few standards of right and wrong, which prescribe about the human
activities, in terms of virtues, advantages to the society, obligations and rights. Ethics or
ethical behaviour is also important for technology utilization or technological advancements
in any company.
3. Conclusion
Therefore, conclusion could be easily drawn that ethical issues that are related to the
deployment as well as utilization of information and communication technology or ICT are
extremely important and should be eradicated on time. The main reason for this would be that
a proper ethical behaviour should be followed as these issues eventually constitute the basic
conditions for human values and attitudes, which specify human behaviour and actions even
before implying the basic conditions of maintenance and usefulness of ICT systems. The
above report has properly demonstrated about the ethical issue of one of the most popular
ICT case studies, Quora Data Breach with the help of Doing Ethics Technique.

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References
Ciulla, J. B. (Ed.). (2014). Ethics, the heart of leadership. ABC-CLIO.
Coates, A. J. (2016). The ethics of war.
Critchley, S. (2014). Ethics of deconstruction. Edinburgh University Press.
Frank, A. W. (2013). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. University of
Chicago Press.
Fromm, E. (2013). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. Routledge.
Gatens, M. (2013). Imaginary bodies: Ethics, power and corporeality. Routledge.
Kagan, S. (2018). Normative ethics. Routledge.
Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. Univ of
California Press.
Peters, R. S. (2015). Ethics and Education (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.
Quora Data Breach. (2018). [online]. Accessed from
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/technology/quora-hack-data-breach.html
[Accessed on 21 May 2019].
Reamer, F. G. (2013). Social work values and ethics. Columbia University Press.
Ross, D. (2013). Foundations of ethics. Read Books Ltd.
Singer, P. (Ed.). (2013). A companion to ethics. John Wiley & Sons.
Trevino, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2016). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how
to do it right. John Wiley & Sons.