Unit IV Ethical Issues in

Digital World
Unit IV Ethical Issues in Digital World
• Netiquettes
• netiquette, abbreviation of Internet etiquette or network etiquette,
guidelines for courteous communication in the online environment. It
includes proper manners for sending e-mail, conversing online, and so
on. Much like traditional etiquette, which provides rules of conduct in
social situations, the purpose of netiquette is to help construct and
maintain a pleasant, comfortable, and efficient environment for online
communication, as well as to avoid placing strain on the system and
generating conflict among users.
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/netiquette)
• Netiquette is a made-up word from the words net and etiquette.
Netiquette thus describes the rules of conduct for respectful and
appropriate communication on the internet.
• Netiquette is often referred to as etiquette for the internet. These are
not legally binding rules, but recommended rules of etiquette.
Netiquette is mostly used for dealing with unknown people on the
internet. The rules of netiquette very depending on the platform and its
participants .
• Netiquette includes rules that provide guidance for appropriate social
interaction and technical performance online. What constitutes good
netiquette varies among the many subcultures of the Internet, and, of
course, netiquette issues change with time and technology.
• Netiquette represents the importance of proper manners and behavior
online. In general, netiquette is the set of professional and social
etiquettes practiced and advocated in electronic communication over
any computer network. Common guidelines include being courteous
and precise, and avoiding cyber-bullying. Netiquette also dictates that
users should obey copyright laws and avoid overusing emoticons.
• Although the specific rules governing netiquette may be different
depending on the forum being used, it is equally applicable to chatting,
blogging, message boards, email and surfing the Internet.
Netiquette Rules
• 1.Remember That You’re Talking to Another Person
• When you have a conversation with someone, nonverbal
communication is just important as the words you say. When you
communicate online via text only, you don’t see how the other person
is reacting and it can be easy to say something hurtful. Remember that
you’re talking to someone with feelings and avoid hurtful language
and profanity. Something that might be considered a joke if you say it
aloud might be misconstrued when read and taken as an offensive
comment.
• Choose your words wisely and use respective language. If you
wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it online.
• Respect Others’ Privacy
• If a friend tells you something in confidence, don’t share that
information with others. Follow this rule online, where friends can
share photos, links, and other kinds of personal information. Don’t
forward private messages, photos, and information without first
checking with the person who shared it. Maintaining trust with your
connections is important both online and offline. And remember:
Sharing someone’s personal information without their permission can
be considered doxing.
• 2.Represent Yourself Well
• Since so much of your online communication is based in text, what
you type and post becomes especially important. Pay attention to the
content of your posts. It can be tempting to post inflammatory
comments on a message board or in a chat room, but the Internet is
forever. Keep in mind that flame wars, swearing, and content intended
to cause controversy is considered poor netiquette. If anything, do
your best to keep online drama to a minimum and do your part to keep
flame wars under control.
• If you’re a member of an online message board or forum, there are
typically moderators in place to make sure that everyone is playing
nicely and adhering to whatever rules are in place. For example, a
popular forum site has a content policy in place that allows moderators
to restrict the access of people who post inflammatory or harmful
content. In some cases, users may even be banned from the site. Social
media sites employ an administrative team who work to ensure that
content posted is not overly aggressive and may restrict posting access
for those who break the rules.

• Content matters online. Since you’re not interacting face to face, your
content is all another person has available to form an impression or an
opinion.
• 3. Share Information Wisely
• You shouldn’t share inaccurate information—no matter where it
originated. Make sure you’re sharing content from factual websites
and articles. Do a quick web search to verify the contents of an article
before sharing it. Not only will this help you to be able to spot fake
apps and fake news, but by fact-checking what you post, you’ll help to
build others’ trust in you.
• 4. Keep the spam to a minimum
• You don’t need to forward every chain email you receive or share
every article you read on social media. Focus on meaningful content
and real connections, rather than sharing for the sake of sharing. A
common social engineering scam is to attach a virus to an email in
hopes that it will be widely circulated. If you share an email
containing a virus with your friends, you friends may stop opening
your emails at all.
Refrences
• https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/preemptive-safety/what-is-
netiquette
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-life-hacks/privacy-
and-safety/what-is-netiquette
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/netiquette
Ethics in digital
communication
Ethics in digital communication
• Digital and virtual communication, however, often comes with a
distinct loss in social and relational quality as compared to our real
interactions when we are physically present to communicate with
others.
• In 2016, Oxford University Press chose post-truth as its word of the
year. It is defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which
objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than
appeals to emotion and personal belief.”* In such a context, it
becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish falsehood from truth.
“Fake news,” misinformation, and disinformation have become
prevalent in our age of social media.
Ethics in digital communication
• In the digital world, as in the pre-digital world, we need to prevent and
limit communication that is inaccurate or false, that slanders, defrauds,
or deceives, whether or not it can be shown to harm in each particular
case. Similarly, we need to ensure that online communication does not
violate privacy or damage reputations, that it aims to be informative
and accurate, and not to mislead or slander. Most of this work is done
by legislation and regulation that prescribes norms and standards for
action, rather than by trying to divide online content into the
prospectively harmful and the prospectively harmless.
Ethics in digital communication
• Digital technologies also made it easier to spread rumours and
conspiracies, to spy on others, to destroy reputations, to promote false
claims, and to damage democracy.
• Digital technologies make protecting informational privacy harder.
They support the spread and targeting not only of information, but of
misinformation and disinformation, and make it easier to obtain,
organise, suppress, link, redistribute, and sell data that are linkable to
personal information. Possibilities for breaching privacy have
mushroomed with the growth of digital technologies.
Ethics in digital communication
• Privacy requires reasonable assurance that information can reach
intended recipients without becoming available to others, let alone
becoming public knowledge. Data protection measures have been
widely used to support privacy by prohibiting the sharing, reuse, and
sale of ‘personal data’ unless the relevant data subject(s) consent.
• Digital technologies also make it easier to affect others anonymously.
Until recently, anonymity was seldom seen as a central ethical
consideration. Anonymous publications and benefactions seemed
unproblematic, perhaps because they weren’t wholly anonymous.
Ethics in digital communication
• Information, misinformation, and disinformation can be assembled,
targeted, or suppressed by powerful actors whom few can identify.
Conspiracies can proliferate without their anonymous organisers being
identifiable. Data brokers can supply personal data to their customers
without being identifiable, and therefore without being accountable.
An unregulated online world offers some powerful actors a cloak of
anonymity under which to hide their action, often at the expense of
those whose information is aggregated and deployed.
Ethics in Cyberspace
Ethics in Cyberspace
• Cyberethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers,
encompassing user behaviour and what computers are programmed to
do, and how this affects individuals and society.
• Need for cyber-ethics
• 1. Increasing Cybercrime: Cyber-crime, hacking into people’s bank
accounts and stealing their money, or defrauding people in a myriad of
ways is becoming trend now. This increasing trend of cyber crime
demand need of proper set of codes and rules.
Ethics in Cyberspace
• 2.Increasing unethical behaviour: There are many kinds of ethically
or morally irresponsible behaviour, in the space opened up by the
internet from actions involving people’s financial status, through hate-
speech or writing regarding gender, race, culture, and a host of other
morally dubious (if not constitutionally illegal).
• 3. Spying: Actions such as governments or corporations spying on
individuals, individuals spying on governments or corporations, and so
on, raise the need of cyber ethical code. A cyber ethical code would
enlighten citizens about what is good or bad for them and will held
government accountable for unethical actions.
Ethics in Cyberspace
• 4. Threat to privacy: Over 100 years later, the internet and
proliferation of private data through governments and e-commerce is
an area which requires a new round of ethical debate involving a
person’s privacy. Privacy from an ethical and moral point of view
should be central to dignity and individuality and personhood.
Individuals surrender private information when conducting
transactions and registering for services.
• 5. Frauds: Fraud and impersonation are some of the malicious
activities that occur due to the direct or indirect abuse of private
information. Identity theft is rising rapidly. Public records search
engines and databases are the main culprits contributing to the rise of
cybercrime. Ethical business practice protects the privacy of their
customers by securing information which may contribute to the loss of
Ethics in Cyberspace
• 6. Ownership: Ethical debate has long included the concept of
property. This concept has created many clashes in the world of
cyberethics. One philosophy of the internet is centred around the
freedom of information. The controversy over ownership occurs when
the property of information is infringed upon or uncertain.
• 7. Intellectual property rights: The ever-increasing speed of the
internet and the emergence of compression technology, opened the
doors to Peer-to-peer file sharing, a technology that allowed users to
anonymously transfer files to each other, previously seen on programs.
Much of this, however, was copyrighted music and illegal to transfer
to other users. Whether it is ethical to transfer copyrighted media is
another question. Restrictions are required because companies would
not invest weeks and months in development if there were no
Ethics in Cyberspace
• 8. Digital rights management (DRM): Blind making of audio books
of PDFs, allowing people to burn music they have legitimately bought
to CD or to transfer it to a new computer etc. are seen as violation of
the rights of the intellectual property holders, opening the door to
uncompensated use of copyrighted media. Another ethical issue
concerning DRMs involves the way these systems could undermine
the fair use provisions of the copyright laws. The reason is that these
allow content providers to choose who can view or listen to their
materials making the discrimination against certain groups possible.
Ethics in Cyberspace
• 9. Accessibility, censorship and filtering: Accessibility, censorship
and filtering bring up many ethical issues that have several branches in
cyberethics. Many questions have arisen which continue to challenge
our understanding of privacy, security and our participation in society.
Throughout the centuries mechanisms have been constructed in the
name of protection and security. Internet censorship and filtering are
used to control or suppress the publishing or accessing of information.
The legal issues are similar to offline censorship and filtering.
Whether people are better off with free access to information or should
be protected from what is considered by a governing body as harmful,
indecent or illicit is a new debate.
Ethics in Cyberspace
• 1o. Freedom of information: Freedom of information, that is the
freedom of speech as well as the freedom to seek, obtain and impart
information brings up the question of who or what, has the jurisdiction
in cyberspace. The right of freedom of information is commonly
subject to limitations dependent upon the country, society and culture
concerned.
• 11. Digital divide: An issue specific to the ethical issues of the
freedom of information is what is known as the digital divide. This
refers to the unequal socio-economic divide between those who have
had access to digital and information technology, such as cyberspace,
and those who have had limited or no access at all. This gap of access
between countries or regions of the world is called the global digital
divide.
Thanks